


Together With Eyes Undimmed

by Falke



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: F/M, Gen, One Shot Collection, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-05 23:15:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 49
Words: 83,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6727384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falke/pseuds/Falke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One-shots, single scenes and speedfics from Zootopia. Mostly Judy/Nick, probably. These will sometimes play loose with canon, will sometimes dip into violence and suggestive content and will probably spiral out to various AUs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Self-Sabotaging Pillow Talk

**Author's Note:**

> Collection title derived from a piece of Natural History Museum concept art by [Cory Loftis.](http://coryloftis.tumblr.com/post/141119829834/duuuummmppp-my-environment-contributions-to?is_related_post=1)
> 
> Some of these stories fit into larger timelines, and they're listed here as I write them, not necessarily as canon time progresses. Check the [chronology](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yPmpmdo39SmiRNC4BJVv2PAWi7fxBoP5FWba9n8s3qg/edit?usp=sharing) to see what goes where.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I want them to actually talk to you at some point," she persisted, and grabbed his paws before they got too far away. "More than just the wave they gave you at graduation. I got them over their fear of foxes, you know. I told you about Gideon."
> 
> "I know, Carrots. But working with a fox is much different than discovering your daughter curls up with one every few nights."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains neutron star-density fluff, implied nudity and sexually suggestive content.

Nick had a thing for fusion.

It had taken a while to grow on Judy, who had started life with country sensibilities and then eventually built a mainstream collection of mostly pop. But she listened to it more and more when she was over. It probably helped that she got to spend time with him while she did it. Everything was more enjoyable when you had a fox idly stroking your ears.

It was their weekend, their first free evening after days of pleasantly thorough policing. A traffic stop-turned drug raid this time, just to keep things interesting, and the accompanying paperwork, because there was no escaping that. But they both threw themselves at it. Nick, she was both pleased and a bit melancholy to see, really did do it for the sake of it now, not just for her.

And, well, their nights tended to make up for any romance lost to the rigors of patrol.

Judy turned to take in her bedmate's splash of coppery fur. Nick kept white sheets, always clean and well-laundered. He stood out.

"What?" he asked.

"Up a bit."

Nick adjusted his careful claws and Judy closed her eyes in pleasure.

"Highland Woods tomorrow?" He asked.

"Riverwalk's closer," Judy said. "And it's warm enough to poke feet in the water this time."

"Hadn't thought of that."

They went for walks on Saturday mornings, with bagels. Judy had been meaning to get them back to Riverwalk now that Spring had sprung.

She pushed herself closer to him under the comforter, halfway onto his bare chest. She was swimming in one of his green shirts; it took a minute to wrestle her arms through the sleeves, even when they were rolled. She traced the rise of his collarbone with her fingers. "I'll let you choose the bagels, then. Moe's or Gerald Brothers."

Nick considered.

Her phone rang. Judy started on top of Nick. It was almost ten o'clock and that wasn't her service tone. Who could possibly-

Oh, cheese. She'd forgotten about yesterday already, the way the paperwork had dragged on from all the evidence they'd tagged. But a promise was a promise. Her heart picked up a few beats and she fumbled for the remote to pause the music. Of all the times to call...

She scrambled back to her side of Nick's bed and reached for her phone. The ceiling was anonymous, at least, and if she pulled the shirt tight enough it wouldn't be too obvious it was hanging off her otherwise naked frame. She wrapped it close and turned to Nick. This would be the hard part.

"If you really love me, not a sound. Don't move, don't talk, don't even think."

His ears dropped, in exaggerated dread. He placed a finger to his muzzle and nodded.

Judy put the phone on her pillow and checked the camera angle, then glared a warning at Nick again and tapped receive.

"Hi, mom."

"Oh, Judy, I'm glad I didn't wake you up." Her mother frowned from the screen. "At least I don't think I did. Where are you?"

Judy pretended not to see Nick's jaw dropping open. "Over at a friend's. We're watching movies for the weekend. I wasn't sleeping."

"Oh, good. How was your week? Quieter than last, I hope?"

"A bit busier, actually. Lots of paperwork."

"Aw, poor Jude. At least you're staying safe."

"Always, mom." Judy's ear rotated. Nick was indeed motionless, and that was a bad sign. She couldn't glare at him again without it being obvious, so she stabbed a threatening finger at what she hoped was his nose.

"We just got in from the Triburrows Spring Swap," her mom said. "It ran even later than last year. Cobbler judging went into overtime."

Judy froze as a canine tongue lapped at her finger.

"That's - uh, that's great! Did Dad beat Mr. Anders again this year?"

"No contest," she heard her dad crow from somewhere back in their kitchen. "It's the ice cream, it's always the ice cream."

Her mom went on about selling out of blueberries again and the renovations on the school they were going to help with next week and Judy tried not to let the panic and the indignation and the mounting pleasure show on her face as Nick continued his assault. He had her finger between gentle teeth now, just tight enough to keep her from getting free. He knew what that did to her.

"-so I told Miss Marielle and the rest of them they could teach fourth grade back here in the backyard if we really had to. It's their biology session right now and the ladybugs are out, so they could see the whole life cycle-"

Judy yanked her paw free and heard Nick's teeth click together. Hopefully her phone wouldn't jump too much with the motion. "That would be fun." She had to keep the conversation moving. "How are the rest of the kids? Did Leon and Lauren choose colleges yet?"

Her mom launched into an abbreviated rundown of the Hopps brood still at the farm, which to the outside listener probably still sounded exhaustive. 200-plus siblings was a lot, to be fair.

Nick fidgeted. She could feel him moving under the comforter, but she wasn't about to poke at him again and give him another excuse to distract her.

T, U, V, W and back around again mom went. "And Charlie III will be in charge of Saturday pancakes soon, he's so excited to direct all his little brothers and sisters-"

Nick grabbed her tail. Judy yelped.

"Judy! Goodness, are you all right? What's going on?"

"Oh-" Judy covered the camera with a paw and turned to glare. Nick was shaking with silent laughter, ears back, one paw over his muzzle: every inch the bold fox in the cookie jar. "I'm fine." She shook out her ears and uncovered the camera again. "Like I said, it's scary movie night."

"Oh, Judy, I'm so sorry. I know I tend to go on and on. We'll call you sometime this weekend instead. Say hi to Fru Fru for us!"

"Oh, it's not Fru Fru," Judy said. Oh, great. "It's... Nicole, a friend from City Hall."

"Oh! Well, say hi anyway. We'll have to meet her sometime."

"Hi, Jude!" Her father popped onscreen.

"Hi, dad. Nice job on the cobbler ribbon."

"Thanks, hon. I saved you some. Make room in your freezer; we'll send it along with the next package."

"Stu, we have to hang up. She's busy! There's a movie on."

"Oh, okay. Bye, Jude!" He waved.

Her mom ended the call.

Judy put on her best thunderous expression and turned to Nick, except he was looking right back with a mischievous glare of his own.

"One: Nicole?" he asked before she could say anything.

"I had nothing," she muttered.

Nick's face collapsed back into sly fox mode. "You want me to go squeeze into some of your clothes?" He looked her over. "Seems only fair."

"Don't you dare," she said, and reached for him so he wouldn't go anywhere. "You'll stretch my shirts out."

"Fine." He captured her paw and brought it to his lips. "Two: you know you love it."

Oh, but did she. Judy supposed it was her fault for making him wait in his own bed while she talked to her parents. She deserved the distraction. Enjoyed it a lot more than she could ever show to mom or dad.

"More than a little."

Nick pushed on the covers for long enough to get his arms around her again and pulled her close against his chest. "That's a start, I guess."

Judy nestled back against her fox, as deep as she could get into his presence. She loved the way he wrapped all his limbs around her, even his tail. Part of it was a simple matter of scale: Nick being bigger meant he was the best fit to be on the outside. Part of it satisfied Judy's instinct to nest up when it got cold and dark outside.

And no small part of it was the unique dynamic they shared as a fox and a rabbit, that shot their love through with constant reminders of what they were. No matter what Judy thought, no matter what she knew from their time together, there was always that part of her midbrain that twisted with disquiet when she remembered it was fox wrapping her up warm every night.

It didn't scare her. It almost never had. It was a fear to master early in life, and one she'd fought to control and shape and insulate from prejudice as she'd grown and learned and lived in the city. Now, she was past the rough spots, past the tests to her mindset. Now, Judy knew better. There was one fox she never had to be afraid of.

He was playing with her ears, running his nose along their edges.

"You should come back and meet my parents sometime," she said, idly.

"As more than your professional partner, you mean."

"They know we're friends."

Nick rested his muzzle atop her head, between her ears. "Call them back, then. _'Hi, mom and dad, you remember Nick, this shirtless fox playing big spoon here and doing naughty things with his paws?'_ "

Judy squirmed so she could see the humor in his eyes. "There's nothing naughty about a hug."

Nick stopped, considered, and she shivered as he reached down her front, past her borrowed shirt, and did something very naughty indeed.

"Okay, now call them."

"Mmf. They'll like you when they get to know you."

The top of his nose tapped under her cheek. "I hear that tense."

Judy willed her legs not to twitch. Nick was really good at this. "It's happening at some point, fox."

But he withdrew, to her quiet dismay. "I know. I don't want you to rush, though. Don't force anything."

"I want them to actually talk to you at some point," she persisted, and grabbed his paws before they got too far away. "More than just the wave they gave you at graduation. I got them over their fear of foxes, you know. I told you about Gideon."

"I know, Carrots. But working with a fox is much different than discovering your daughter curls up with one every few nights."

"You love it," she told him.

"I love it," he agreed. "More than anything. But this is about you, too. 'Meet my Boyfriend the Fox' is a big step you can't undo."

"Eloquent."

"Well, could you promise me your dad wouldn't tag me with fox spray if I stepped off the train tomorrow?"

"He doesn't just spray unfamiliar foxes," Judy said. "He was never that jumpy. And as far as he knows, you're still just a friend. We don't have to pop that bubble."

Nick's arms tightened around her. His muzzle tapped the base of her ear again. "I smell pretty _unmistakably_ like you right now."

There was the biology again, packed into quiet words that went in right under her armor. And Nick had a point. It was one of those things about them she never mentally registered anymore unless she was actively enjoying it. She loved his scent, and Nick frequently confessed an immobilizing fascination with hers. But it was a clue to those outside now.

Judy would have dismissed it because it was part of what they were now. But Nick, more sensitive to scents, noticed it more often. It was something he kept in mind because he had to, as a predator. He would have been raised to be aware of it, the same way she'd been taught early on to keep an ear on nearby foxes, just in case.

"Do your parents care about predator-prey relationships?" she asked.

A long pause. "I like to think they would have come around."

Their happy little ball of awkward pillow talk shattered. Judy felt her ears wilt.

All this time, all these months together, and it had never come up. He tolerated her ramblings and her reminders about family and her videoconferences with her own parents while they were nearly naked next to each other, without so much as word.

She pushed herself around so she could see his face. He was composed. Solemn, maybe. The hurt she expected to find was missing.

"I never asked." her voice caught in her throat.

"It's okay, Carrots."

"Nick, I'm sorry. I don't even know where to start."

"It's never been something I worried about," Nick said. He took her paws and watched her fingers wrap around his automatically. "Mom died when I was almost still a kit. Dad moved on even earlier. Almost 25 years ago now." One of his ears dropped and he looked up at her. "Wow, I really am that old."

"Nick-"

He shushed her and held her close, stroked her cheeks and her ears and the top of her head.

He was always, always doing that. He could tell her not to worry about it, tell her he didn't worry about it, but the way he was squeezing her betrayed him. She knew him too well now. Underneath the smooth, sarcastic facade he presented to the world, Nick Wilde was still a vulnerable fox. And in those rare moments he did show it, it was to care about her, to transfer his armor to her so his own problems never hurt her.

She felt herself blinking tears into the soft fur of his neck.

Once upon a time, she would have bristled at such personal-sounding guidance as 'don't tell your own parents about me,' even from Nick. But Judy knew even better where his worry came from now. His desire to keep her safe and happy extended into nearly all corners of her life; into those most people wouldn't ever have a right to. She had given him that power. But it wasn't a matter of control, or dominance.

She did it because she loved him. Trusted him enough to surrender to a dynamic she didn't fully understand, because it made him so happy to just lie here and protect her. Sometimes it was the only way she could repay him for the sacrifices he made for her.

"Stop with the droopy ears," he murmured, and nuzzled them. "I just want you to be careful. Don't do something you'll regret because of me. Then you risk ending up like I did."

"I love you," she told his chest ruff.

"I know, sweetheart." Nick brought his paws up under her shirt, against her back. His claws pressed into her shoulders.

"And I hate the things you have to worry about," she said.

"I can't share my open mindset with everyone." He went modest. "It would be nice if I could, though. Actual crime would vanish overnight, reduced to a series of nested pawpsicle scams."

She couldn't decide if she wanted to laugh or cry.

She settled for letting him hold her tight. It wasn't supposed to be about her right now, not with a revelation like that, but this seemed to be how Nick wanted to deal with it. Judy was too persistent to let it go completely, though, and Nick had to know from their experience together these things eventually came into focus. But she was also patient. She would help him however and whenever she could.

She wriggled around again so she could curl up in the shelter of his neck. He sighed around her and settled down.

"Thank you."

"I figure I'll get through to you eventually," she said. "Until then, I'm right here."

This time Nick's claws went almost to the point of pain. "I love you so much, Carrots."

Judy indulged in it, shameless, trying to recapture some of the moment they'd ruined together. She tilted her head so she could kiss him. "I know."


	2. The Only Thing we Have to Fear is Crippling Libel Lawsuits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Through some oversight, ZPD's press liaison wasn't informed Judy would be speaking to the media.
> 
> Or: fallout from the weakest scene in the movie.

"I need ten minutes, Chief."

Bogo hadn't even had time to sit down. He stared at the offending speakerphone light.

Marius Woodward was a four-inch-tall chipmunk, and the only mammal on Bogo's force that he was legitimately afraid of sometimes.

"Now?"

"Would have been better about half an hour ago."

"Come on over, then."

Bogo could guess what it was about. Even as press conferences went, this one had been a barely controlled mess. He'd been doing this for long enough to have a good read on the city's media, and they'd been much louder than ususal. Woodward would have some polite but urgent advice for him, and whatever it was would be worth following.

The rodent-scale door built into the larger one swung open. Bogo heard the patter of little feet and the hiss of the penumatics at the corner of his desk.

ZPD's press liaison looked tense, and not because he drank twice as much police-strength coffee as the police he worked with. Instead of vibrating him apart at the atoms, the caffeine tended to laser-focus his attention.

Now, he skewered Bogo with a look that almost flashed him back to the Academy.

"That could have gone better, Chief."

"It's the biggest case since the swamp raids, I think. ZNN's going to be antsy for a while."

"Not like that." Woodward grimaced in apology. "You gave Hopps way more leash than she should have had."

"How's that?"

"Come on, Chief." The chipmunk paced the length of the desk. "We put our newest, greenest face in front of two dozen mics and let her _speculate_ on the biggest hairball we've dealt with in years."

"She deserved her piece. Jumping in's going to look bad."

"This is going to look worse." Woodward shook his head. "You know even better than I do there's a lot of quiet predator-prey tension out here, even in this city. This case is going to fan it up, maybe like nothing else ever has. ZPD can't afford to help it along."

"Was Hopps wrong?"

"Hopps doesn't have the expertise to be commenting in the first place, full stop." Woodward said. "That's the problem: we don't know either way if what she said is accurate. Think of this savagery thing as a disease. It's a matter for the doctors and scientists now, not peace officers."

"What about the Cliffside raid? We shut down what was basically an illegal prison. Everyone's rescued."

"Everyone's hospitalized," Woodward corrected. His phone beeped. He showed the screen to Bogo as a triple-digit missed-call list incremented by one. "Big difference. And now the press is reporting rumors, stuff we're barely aware of as it is, as fact."

"I can call them back here."

"I don't want to do that until we're on balance ourselves," Woodward said. "We need to be even more careful going forward, with everything. This is a direct public safety issue. You'll be lucky if the worst you get out of this is protests. It's a good time to remind your officers they need to be careful with how they approach predator-prey lines."

"Believe me, they know. And I'll tell them again."

"Good. I'll handle the calls, unless they get really persistent. And now that I think about it I will have a statement for you soon. Don't talk to anyone until then, please. Send them to me."

"Thanks, Woodward." Bogo stood as the chipmunk started for the tube to the floor. "What do I owe you?"

Woodward scowled and silenced his phone again. "You can start with a megafauna-scale pot of the good stuff." He inspected the dregs in his coffee mug and waggled it at Bogo in warning. "Not this swill you give your detectives. It's going to be a long night."


	3. Judy Visits Nick's Mom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A speedfic for Mother's Day I hadn't intended to write last night.
> 
> Takes place some indeterminate time after the events of the film.

"Mom."

"-And it's going to take at least three more trips, I don't know where your father is going to find the help to move all of it, with everyone gone-"

Judy looked both ways, twice. Crossing streets with a phone glued to the side of her head always made her nervous. _"Mom."_

"I wish you had the time to come back sooner; he could have used another pair of strong paws."

"Mom, you're rambling again."

"Am I? Oh, no. I'm sorry, Judy."

"It's okay." Judy made it across and into the shade of the pines along the sidewalk. "I should get going anyway. I have a meeting to keep, and you have a lot more calls to take."

"Well, okay."

"I'll see you in a couple of weeks, all right? I love you."

"Love you, too, Jude." Her mom's voice shifted as she pulled her phone away from her mouth. "Say bye to Judy, everyone!"

Judy couldn't help her grin as she put her phone away. Mother's Day was a serious undertaking at the Hopps household. It started at sunrise and usually didn't end until sundown the next day. It's what happened when you had so many voices trying to get their piece in. They made a party of it, one where mom was queen and got waited on paw and foot.

She wished she could have been there. She still had vivid memories of clambering up onto the big floury apron when she was just a kit, so eager to have her sample the runny little Mother's Day cupcake she'd only half-baked that she'd nearly poked her mother's eye out.

But work was work, and it kept her busy unless she scheduled time off in advance. Nick still wasn't free for the day. She'd beaten him at the paperwork race, again. It was good, this time. Now she had a chance for this little detour, the one she'd always planned to make but had never made time for until today.

It was very different here. Quiet and still in the sunbeams; the polar opposite of the mad rush of hundreds of siblings, but no less meaningful for it. Judy could feel it pulling at her chest already. But that was okay.

There was the tag she was looking for, down at the end. Judy ran a finger along the little wrapped package in her paws and kept a careful distance from the other mammals that were already here.

"Hi, Marian." Judy's smile blossomed again. She couldn't help it. "I brought this for you."

She had a lone flower, one of the first gardenias of the season. She took a deep noseful of the subtle scent before she passed it over.

"It represents secret love," she said. Her smile turned shy. "I don't know if Nick's told you, and my parents are being slower to come around than either of us would like."

They worked hard at their relationship. They had no choice, given the risks they both assumed. It was more difficult than they liked sometimes. There were arguments, and misunderstandings, and the constant threat of their connection spiraling out of their control and into the public eye. Sometimes Judy really had to push at him, to get him to open up and explain why he did the things he did. He was a private fox, sometimes. She'd only recently learned about Marian, about his mother, and that night had hurt.

But Nick also carried a love for Judy like nothing else she had ever experienced, and that made it all worth it. She saw it every day, in the way he held the doors for her smaller stature, in the way he would make a-bit-more-than-professional eye contact with her and smile just so before crouching down to talk to the cubs and kits visiting the station, in the way he curled himself around her to protect her almost every night.

"I don't think he knows I'm here," Judy said. "But I never can tell with him. I wanted to come find you, in case he can't make it today." She sighed.  "To say thank you. To make sure you knew how much you have to be _proud_ of him for-"

Her throat closed, finally. It had taken longer than she expected, but she was prepared for it all the same, and she knew Marian would forgive her this.

"He gives and gives. Sacrifices everything." Her tears fell on the grass. "And not-" _Deep breath._ "Not just for me. Nick has learned to love helping people. That's what makes me feel like the luckiest rabbit alive."

Judy sank to her haunches. The rough granite was warm under her paws in the afternoon sun.

"I promise you I'll do right by him," she said. "He told me what those mean, you know. Promises. You should see him smile when I promise him things. Even little things, like emptying the trash."

They lit Nick up, from the tips of his ears to the tip of his tail. They were one of the all-too-rare holdovers from his childhood, one of the things his mother had taught him and he had never let go. Judy hadn't understood why she so loved making promises for him, or receiving them in return. Not until he told her.

"You loved him when no one else did. Taught him how to be happy. And now he makes me feel so happy and thankful and _perfect,_ " Judy said. "So I owe you more than I'll ever really be able to say. I never got the chance." She reached out and adjusted the gardenia against the headstone.

"Thank you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOW GO CALL YOUR MOM.
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](https://falke-scribblings.tumblr.com/)


	4. On The Train Home Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time waits for no fox. But Nick Wilde has learned to take what he can get.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluff and feels and a late night train ride.

_One, three, sixteen._

_Two, two, three, fifteen, sixteen._

Nick always found it hard to believe that was Judy's heart rate at rest. Almost three beats for every one of his. Four for every one of her steady breaths, sixteen for every yellow-glowing pylon they passed on the tracks.

They never did spring for sleepers, not even on the late-night train back to the city. The full-scale upright seats were comfortable enough, and this time of night the car was almost deserted anyway, so Nick had no reservations in letting Judy lean against him as she fell asleep. He was even helping her along a bit, keeping her close with paws around her shoulders and on her stomach just because he could.

She deserved all the rest he could help her get, because they never did get much back at Bunnyburrow. They were always busy, always rushing. And there were kits everywhere.

It was a different kind of busy than the work they did in the city, of course. They were technically on vacation, according to the pay codes, but these last few trips had been too taxing on her - on him - to be really relaxing.

Her family was dying.

It was the way of things, but Judy had never experienced it like this. She was just old enough now to witness an entire generation of great-grandparents start to fade, all at once. These were the faces she'd known since early childhood, in that close-knit way rabbit families had. Great-Grandma-Tammy - Tams, they called her behind her back - had been nursemaid and babysitter, for Judy and nine or so of her young brothers and sisters.

Tams had gone to sleep one last time two days ago, out on the back porch in the spring sunlight, in the company of dozens of her family. She'd been happy. Quiet. Nick remembered her smiling at him - him, specifically - when she'd seen him there, his paws on Judy's shoulders.

"You're good for her," she'd told him, in the Hopps kitchen two months ago while they made pies, the one time they'd met before this weekend. "You're watching over my Judy for me."

Decline among rabbits was mercifully swift, it seemed. And Tams had been happy and comfortable. But Judy took it hard, and Nick had doubled-down on his quiet promise to the distant relative he'd met once.

_Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen._

_Three._

_One, two, three, four..._

They couldn't make all of them. Judy was entirely out of bereavement leave, almost out of what had been an unprecedented stack of PTO. It was one of the sacrifices she had to assume when she'd taken a job in the city, but Nick wasn't sure she'd considered this eventuality back when she'd first moved. She'd be eating into sick days to come out for the next one, and Nick was going to have to draw the line somewhere.

There would be an argument, and tears and hugs and Nick would feel horrible for standing between her and something she felt she had to do. But it was part of keeping her healthy and safe. Part of that promise.

Judy's phone buzzed in her limp paws. Nick looked down as the vibration made her stir. He slipped his paws around hers and plucked her phone away so she wouldn't wake. It was her parents, on Muzzletime. He tapped receive and Bonnie Hopps was peering from the screen.

"Oh, hi, Nick dear."

Nick smiled and waggled fingers hello at the camera.

"Are you two on your way safe?"

He nodded and angled the camera so she would see Judy, nestled against him with her chin under his neck where it always was; so she would see his paw go around her shoulders.

"At least she's sleeping now." Bonnie's smile was relieved, almost beatific. It pulled at Nick. It was quite a world he lived in, that a rabbit would be so happy to see her daughter curled up with a fox. But it only got more comfortable. Every time they went home to Judy's like this, her parents were happier and happier to see him with her. They cared as much as he did, in their own way.

"Get her home safe for us," Bonnie said. She swiped at her eyes. "And tell her we love her."

"Promise."

"Thank you, Nicholas. Good night."

Nick put the phone away and pulled Judy close again so he could rest his chin against the top of her head. They hadn't told him they loved him. Not yet. He wasn't sure he was ready to hear that, to be honest. But it was getting more and more obvious. Judy said so.

_Seven, eight, nine, two, ten, eleven, twelve._

It was so fast, and now more than ever Nick felt Judy was living at breakneck speed, dragging him along for the ride. If he could slow her down right now, he would.

When would the next call be? Two months? Three? How long did her grandparents have? They would be even closer in her heart, hurt even more.

It wasn't healthy. Nick didn't like dwelling on it, either. He'd never had reason to until he met Judy. But her family was becoming his family, bit by bit - all the fierce, constant love and little kits and pancake breakfasts and morning sun on the fields and the splinters that dug just a little deeper into him each time they lost someone he barely knew.

It was going to get worse before it got better. One day - not soon, but sooner than he or Judy or any of them were going to like - she'd need her bereavement leave like never before. That was the one that scared Nick the most, because he had no idea what he was going to do then, either. He would be adrift, just like her.

He couldn't stop that any more than he could stop the passage of the train, or slow down Judy's heart so she stopped racing away from him, and it was quietly terrifying.

_Sixteen. Three. One, two, three..._

She knew, of course. He'd told her early on he'd lost his parents when he was young - mom to natural causes, far sooner than he'd been able to process or understand; dad to whatever happened to dads who moved on. That had been it. He'd recovered and healed and learned to look out for himself.

But being with Judy brought back things he hadn't known he'd missed. He felt a magnetism for her family gatherings now, even the fraught ones, because it was so unlike anything he'd ever experienced. He'd fastened to the raw emotion, good and bad, and they had welcomed him. Some things transcended blood and taxonomy, it seemed. Deep down, they all had something in common.

He'd found it with Judy, and they would find more of it and lose parts of it and make some of it themselves. And as long as they were stuck moving forward through time, he wanted to be by her side for it, to be there for her, close enough to count and cherish and love her every breath and beat.

_One, two, three, four..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read a continuation of this story [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6727384/chapters/21364229).
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](https://falke-scribblings.tumblr.com/)


	5. It's not an act if it's True

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Climactic-Scene-in-the-Museum Trope fic

As stages went, a diorama pit was not ideal. Not that Nick had any formal experience with acting.

That was kind of the problem. Sure, he had an audience of just one, but getting out of this was going to require the most convincing performance of his life.

He had to reverse two decades of cultivated appearance, of polishing all the rough edges off so he wouldn't be noticed. Now, for once, he needed the whole world to look at him and see a predator.

A wily fox.

A threat.

And he had about ten seconds.

Night Howlers turned freethinking mammals into mindless, violent things. They called them savages for good reason. But Nick had spent so much time avoiding violence, he wasn't sure he could fake it.

It wasn't enough to get mad at the sheep. Nick got quick reads on people, and that one was as rotten as they came. But it hadn't sunk in yet, much as he might want it to.

There wasn't enough unease or paranoia to draw on. Big, the mobster, had brought that out in him once upon a time. But that was behind him now, really behind him, thanks to Judy.

Judy.

He could see her, hovering in the corner of his eye, pleading in his ear to fight it. She was playing her part to the letter, as ambitious and committed as she ever was. But she was hurt and tired, and at least some of the fear in her expression was very real.

She had ambushed him. He wasn't supposed to care about this rabbit, this little cop who was as quick to threaten to arrest him as she was to reach out for his help and value his insight and save his life.

But he did.

To fear for another's safety now, after a lifetime of isolating himself - it felt so alien, so unused. So much more powerful than any anger he might bring to bear.

So _right_ it made his heart hurt with what it had missed.

That feeling would be enough. But to seize on that risked jeopardizing her. He didn't trust himself not to betray it. If Bellwether up there realized what he was doing and why, realized this wasn't about him anymore-

No. He couldn't assume that risk. He couldn't bring that on her. There had to be something else.

Five seconds now.

Her voice cracked and it sounded so _convincing,_ like she really was scared for him and what he might become.

And now he was, too, because he was desperate, and there was nothing left, nothing but the parts of himself he was scared to touch because they were no safer for her than they were for him.

The parts he buried when store owners looked at fangs and claws and alert canine ears and no further, without regard for the person they were attached to.

The parts he ignored when prey animals feigned business elsewhere, or crossed streets to keep an acceptable distance from the fox who was out all alone late at night.

The parts he justified and rationalized away when landlords backed out on promises, made excuses they knew the down-on-his-luck fox wouldn't have the resources to contest, until he'd been living under a bridge.

It was a component of who he was, deep down. And it wasn't wrong to acknowledge it. But it was dangerous like nothing else, because he'd learned within his first year alone that if he let that resentment and bitterness and rage build, they would tear him apart from the inside.

And now, to bend all twenty years of that emotional fallout to his own shaky will, all at once-

He didn't know if he was strong enough to protect Judy from what it meant. But there was no time. No other option he could bear to consider.

He looked her in the eye, one last glimpse, and willed her to see the fear for her there, the desperate promise that he didn't mean what he was about to do, that he needed her to help him through this.

That he wanted her to _stay._

 

_And after we're done, you can hate me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](https://falke-scribblings.tumblr.com/)


	6. Unscheduled Shore Leave [Civil Enforcement Command AU]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _They had the elevator to themselves this far down. The last bunch of climatologists had gotten off two stops ago, at the main research facilities. The only thing still underneath them was a bunch of automated sensors, and the kilometers of tethers that kept the elevator cable anchored to Titan's surface far below._
> 
>  
> 
> _And the little maintenance deck. Nick couldn't even remember where he'd first heard of it. They'd never chased anyone down here._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can take the rabbit 744 million miles out of her canon universe, but you can't take the workaholic out of the rabbit.  
> Or: I stick Nick and Judy in the police uniforms from my original science-fiction universe and see what happens.

_Titan_  
_Orbital Tether EQ-6_  
_free transit window_

 

"I changed my mind. We don't have time to do this."

"Yes we do, Carrots. Reversion's not for another three hours."

Judy's boots clanked on the elevator grating as she tapped a foot. "You're going to start trusting smugglers to stick to a timetable? You know if we're out of position when they land up there Bogo's going to farm us out to Triton until the Sun goes out."

"There are worse fates," Nick said. "I kind of like the idea of dead-end listening post duty with you. Lots of free time."

Judy made a noise of mild disgust. Nick hid a smile.

She was overreacting, because that was what she did. To be fair to her, they'd been chasing this particular group of bad guys all over space for months. He had his own reservations about dragging them out of position as soon as they went into the field to actually arrest them. They just weren't as loud as the the ones that said Judy needed to give herself a break.

"Tech cracked their encryption two weeks ago, remember?" he asked. "And unless they're a lot smarter than they look so far, they still don't know it."

She eyed him. "Maybe."

They had the elevator to themselves this far down. The last bunch of climatologists had gotten off two stops ago, at the main research facilities. The only thing still underneath them was a bunch of automated sensors, and the kilometers of tethers that kept the elevator cable anchored to Titan's surface far below.

And the little maintenance deck. Nick couldn't even remember where he'd first heard of it. They'd never chased anyone down here.

But the stories said the little elevator platforms made for a good detour. The view was different from within an atmosphere.

A console by the airlock beeped for attention as the elevator started its deceleration. Access to sensor platforms was restricted, even to the few people who could get onto these elevators in the first place. Nick fed it his credentials and got a green light.

 _AWAITING INTEGRITY CHECK,_ came the pleasant computerized voice. _OCCUPANTS: HOPPS, JUDITH L AND WILDE, NICHOLAS P, CEC SPECIAL ACTIVITIES._

"Seal up," Nick said, and pulled his helmet off its belt clip. It locked into place and his ears hurt as his suit pressure jumped.

Judy put her tablet away and donned her own helmet, the one that made her fold her ears behind her head and tuck them down the back of her suit. He used to tease her about it.

"Green air, green seals," she said over their shared channel. She pushed free of the her seat and bobbed in the reduced gravity. "Come here."

They cross-checked each other's collar and glove seals. The computer, satisfied they were adequately protected, directed them into the airlock.

 _JOIN CIVIL ENFORCEMENT,_ the posters had read at Ceres. _SEE THE SOLAR SYSTEM._

It was true. And from down here, it was true in an entirely different way from the views they got of the planets and moons on orbit. That was peaceful and majestic.

Down here, Titan stole the air, with a nitrogen wind they could feel roaring around them even within the airlock housing. They clipped their belt tethers to the safety railing, because between the harsh winds and the negligible gravity, losing one's footing was a very real possibility. Nick followed Judy out.

There was a haze of clouds as far as the eye could see, in every possible color of yellow and dull green, driven by the wind into fantastic streaks and columns, moving fast enough Nick could track their progress. Below them, the huge tethers disappeared into the fog. Above them, the main elevator cable made its subtle curve up to space, which was still close enough to see flickering black through the clouds.

It was like being in an ocean. Nick stared around.

Judy-

Tapped at her pad. Nick could see the screen reflecting off her visor.

 _"Seriously?"_ he asked.

"I'm just checking," she said.

"You have a direct link to the orbital EDR," he said, exasperated. "I watched you set it up so it will ping you when our friends get here."

"I don't want to miss it. Did you not read the Titan databank when we landed? These clouds mess with radio signals from orbit. It's something like twelve percent degradation down here."

Nick checked himself. Their current link to the sensor masts at the top of the elevator shaft read 98 percent strength. "Nice try."

She scowled up at him. "This is reckless."

"I'm Mr. Reckless." He matched her glare with a smile of his own, the one he knew she couldn't ever resist for long. "Relax. We know what they're flying. That class two barge of theirs is forty years old. Its reactors leak. I'll bet you could pick it up with suit sensors."

She turned her tablet off again and seemed to look around at the tableau for the first time. Nick stepped behind her, paws on her shoulders, so she'd be able to feel him pulling on her even through the armored suits. He wanted her to lean against him, the way she used to when they had observation decks to themselves in the quiet hours aboard ship.

Judy had done most of the heavy lifting on this case already, most of the paperwork. And nearly all of that time, she'd been staring either at bulkhead or the boring rock of headquarters at Ceres. He barely saw her look out the windows anymore, even when they had time during transits.

She seemed to be getting it, though. She was giving him more of her weight, and she had that tilt to her head she got when she was looking at something that captured her interest.

"Like cotton candy," she quoted the old line at him. "I didn't know clouds got this fluffy anywhere but Earth."

He followed her gaze to the towers in the distance. "Earth clouds are slow. Maybe one day we'll make enough to go see those firsthand, too."

"Wouldn't that be nice."

Nick looked down at her as she tilted up toward the edge of space. He tapped the muzzle relief of his helmet against her visor. "Kill your radio."

She obliged, and the channel telltale disappeared from his display. He kept his helmet pressed against hers, so they would carry the vibrations of speech without the need for an open comm line.

"You doing okay?"

She smiled in her helmet. "I'm okay. We're just close to being done."

"You can take time for yourself every once in a while."

"I know," she said. "I just want to make sure I do this right."

Nick wasn't sure Judy was capable of doing wrong. He was as close as she ever got to that. Her bad influence. But when it got her looking like this - that wide-eyed fascination with the universe that had so attracted him to her in the first place - he felt it was justified.

"Think Bogo will give us a day once we lock this one up?"

"I don't know," she said. "He's never-"

Her jaw went slack. Nick looked up.

The clouds had blown free above them, exposing a wide ribbon of the sky to space. Saturn hung dead center, impossibly large, its edge-on rings slashing a line across its face.

He felt his fur fluff inside his suit. He hadn't realized they were so perfectly positioned to see this.

Being in an atmosphere gave this an entirely new context. Living and working in space made you lose perspective, sometimes. Even the asteroids were only a few jumps away. There was no appreciation for the incredible scales involved.

And if he felt that now, Judy certainly did, too. He looked down at her and smiled at the tableau reflecting in her huge eyes.

"Worth it, I take it? The tourists pay big money to get views like this."

"That's beautiful," she breathed. "It's like I can touch it."

"All according to plan." Nick pulled her close again, and they watched until the clouds swirled back over the planet above them.

And then Judy jumped at the alert tone in their helmets. It sent her off the deck.

Nick looked. EDR was picking up a very familiar reversion signature.

"Oh, no," Judy said. She yanked on her tether, all business again, closing the distance to the airlock in a series of wide leaps. She was back on the radio. "Guess who's early?"

"Yeah."

_"Nick-"_

"It's not my fault! We would have heard if anyone caught this."

Judy fairly vibrated with impatience as the airlock cycled. "But we're a good half hour out."

"It'll take them two hours to get through the pattern up there." Nick swung around inside the cabin and keyed the elevator for emergency nonstop. At least the computer swallowed his credentials again. "And this will take little less than half an hour after all. All aboard the late cops express."

Judy yanked her helmet off and shook out her ears. "That's illegal, Nick."

 _DEPARTURE IN TWENTY SECONDS,_ the computer said. _SECURE FOR ONE POINT FIVE G ACCELERATION._

"It is too _legal,_ miss regs. Or at least grey. Two CEC officers with a verified target on orbit? Definitely not illegal to take the fast route."

He watched her wrestle with it. She wanted to be mad at him, and he probably deserved it. But she hadn't talked him out of coming down here in the first place, and he knew she would have if she was really worried enough.

They'd make it. If there was one truth across the whole solar system, it was that CEC-orange pauldrons made holes open up in crowds.

He pulled his restraint bars down and reached over the check Judy's smaller ones.

She'd wanted the break, he decided. And she'd enjoyed it while it had lasted.

Their couches rotated so they faced the ceiling, and acceleration was a weight on his chest. She grabbed his paw.

"I forgive you," she said in a small voice.

"Yeah."

"But let me pick next time?"

Nick let the Gs pull his muzzle around so he could see her face, and returned her strained smile. "Deal."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](https://falke-scribblings.tumblr.com/)


	7. Something for him, and a Little Something for her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An obnoxious, racy speedfic chronicling one of the many, many times I'm sure this sort of thing happens.
> 
> **Suggestive** for tipsy Judy and pantyraids.

She was already about two over the line, she judged.

It didn't take much, not with her body weight. Nick kept a range of what were honestly nasty, bitter beers in his fridge - none of the fruity drinks she preferred. But it was the weekend, damn it, and Judy wanted to take some of the edge off.

So she nursed a second bottle while Nick showered, and tried to decide how she wanted the evening to progress.

They were both tired, to the point that extra activity was probably out of the question. Long weeks tended to lead to a Friday night of simply curling up and being close. Sometimes it was more about the recovery.

Maybe something simple. Something for him while they settled down, because she knew he loved that sort of thing, no matter how tired they were.

Judy liked wearing Nick's shirts to bed anyway. They were like mainsails on her, so long sometimes that she would trip on their hems if she wasn't careful. But they smelled like him and reminded her of him and were warm and comfortable.

She rummaged in his closet, looking for the green one she'd seen him wear the first few times they'd met. It was on the end of the rod, alongside a few other eye-hurting tropical patterns, separated from his duty blues by a series of plain grey collared ones. Those were nice, too, now that she thought about it.

She grabbed one and made for the door, and something else caught her eye, in the half-open drawer of the little dresser.

Oh, why not?

The cascade of the shower had stopped while she'd been shopping, so she hurried up and changed while Nick dried off. She was parked on her couch by his window, trying to finish the beer, when he came up behind her.

He stopped at the end of the couch, his fluffy white towel firmly around his waist, and got a slow smile.

"This is a new one."

"You were taking forever," Judy said, when she'd lowered the bottle enough to ensure it wouldn't spill.

"Grey, huh?"

"I decided I like grey. You make it work pretty well."

"It just blends in on you," Nick said. "You're a shirt with ears."

"Ugh." She scowled at him and waved the beer. "Here. Finish this. Catch up."

Nick's ears dropped a fraction. "It wasn't that bad a week. You okay?"

"Fine. I just always forget how little I actually like these things until I'm most of the way through them."

Nick took the bottle and, at her insistent look, downed half of what was left in one go.

"Acquired taste, sure." He held the bottleneck between two fingers and let it swing back and forth. "There's some really old rum on top of the fridge, I think. Want something stronger?"

"Probably an even worse idea," Judy said.

Nick shrugged and tipped more of the beer back, and this time he got the right angle to notice the flash of light blue fabric in Judy's other paw.

"Okay, now those I've definitely never seen you wear."

"I thought about it." She looked at the boxer-briefs. "But I'm pretty sure they'd fall off if I stood up."

Nick moved closer, right onto the couch next to her. Judy caught the rush of shampoo-clean air as he sat back and took another drink. "You say that like it's a bad thing."

Judy looked over at the cant of his ears, at the easy grin. She still couldn't predict when their easy banter would gain that little bit of force and purpose.

But the surprise was always a welcome one. She would look over and see him watching her with that expression, the one that made him look like he couldn't believe how lucky he was sometimes.

She held out his shorts, and when Nick reached for them she pulled them back.

"You're overdressed."

Nick tilted his head at her. "Ransom, is it?"

She held them up again and motioned for the beer. "Go on."

So he got up and hooked his thumbs around the waist of the towel. He kept his back to her as he pulled it off, but Judy prided herself on her ability to enjoy this from any angle.

Nick's tail was longer and heavier than hers; between that and the Academy training that had whipped him into shape he had a lower back like a statue.

And when he bent to pull on his shorts, that tail swayed just so...

Judy polished off the drink after all and got to her feet on the couch, so she'd be at eye level with Nick when he turned around.

He hugged her close, and she put her muzzle alongside his throat, where he was warm and still just a bit damp and smelled so perfectly of her fox.

"Thanks for the show," she murmured.

One of his arms was around her back, keeping her pressed against him. The other skated under the borrowed shirt, to trail light claws along her bare hip.

"You, too. I do like the shirt, you know. Looks even better on you than it does on me."

Judy rolled her eyes. "Oh, good."

He kissed her and she kissed him back because it was a contest, and he picked her up and carried her carefully to the bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](https://falke-scribblings.tumblr.com/)


	8. They Say Jump, I Still Ask How High

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the position of ZPD Staff Detective, the oversight committee weighs all aspects of a candidate's record. In matters of public service, dedication and bravery, Officer Judy Hopps exceeds expectations.

This was the pettiest, most immature thing Judy Hopps could remember doing in years. She was an adult, damn it; an upstanding cop who followed the rules and had the respect of her colleagues and friends.

And she was hiding from all of them.

Just for now, she told herself. She didn't want to see anyone yet, not even Nick; no matter how many times he called and texted. She was reading the messages and manually sending his calls to voicemail so he'd know she was at least okay. She owed him that much, regardless of how she might feel.

She put the letter down and pushed away from her desk. The sadness was alien. The bitterness was uncomfortable. Foul. It wasn't directed at anyone, or at least she didn't think it was. Maybe it was more self-pity. She preferred that explanation. Nobody deserved resentment for their hard work.

Rain drummed on the window and nearly drowned out her phone vibrating again.

_Clawhauser wants to know where you are._

Judy groaned. It was bad enough that she couldn't bring herself to ignore Nick; now he was pulling their friends into her little sadness spiral, too.

 _Tell him I'm okay,_ she sent. _I'll make it up to him._

_You could come tell him yourself._

That would require eye contact, though, and holding herself up like she always did, and pretending not to be the deflated, ineffective little rabbit she was sure she was right now. Claw deserved better than seeing her like that.

She left the message alone and sat on her bed to watch the rain. Maybe she should just sleep; look at this in the morning when the crushing disappointment would surely have lessened in the face of her responsibilities.

Instead her ear twitched at the rapid-fire tapping of claws on her apartment door, and she closed her eyes. Only one mammal she knew ever knocked like that.

"Carrots."

"Why are you here, Nick?"

"Because you're not there." The knock came again. "Open up, Carrots, or I'll go steal the spare key from downstairs. Your landlady can feel the concentrated mope from the lobby."

Judy couldn't ignore that, now that she knew exactly where he was and what he was doing. She sighed and unlocked the door.

Nick leaned on the frame, head cocked down at her. He was off duty, dressed as only he could, incongruous almost to the point of discomfort. He had a grey sport coat over what looked like a ZPD staff tee. There was a plastic shopping bag in his paw.

"They sent me to make sure you really were okay," he said.

She let him in so he could lock her door behind him.

They didn't have to say anything, really. Nick knew, because when this had all started he was the first to hear about it. He'd endured her chatter and anticipation and eager hope for weeks. Judy knew he'd been excited, too. And now his ears weren't as high as they usually were. But maybe that was just him worrying about her silence.

Nick dropped his bag on his couch and folded her in a hug she had no choice but to return. He was good at that.

"You know I love you," he murmured.

"Yeah."

"You know you love me."

She nodded against his chest and looked up at him. "Where's _there?_ What did Clawhauser do?"

"He threw a surprise party. It was going to be him, Fangmire, Marki and me." He squeezed her again. "And you."

 _Guilt._ Guilt she deserved and welcomed.

"Do they know?"

"Well, it wasn't the surprise we'd expected. But yes. They know."

"They're not still waiting for me," she said.

Nick kissed the top of her head. "They're having fun together. They know, and they told me to come sort you out."

"I feel terrible."

"It's okay, love." Nick sat them on the couch.

Just say it. "I feel terrible, because it's not their fault I'm still Officer Hopps." Her eyes misted. "I'm guilty and jealous and angry and I don't know why. I can't be angry at anyone. It's not right. It's not Bogo's fault, or your fault, or Claw's or Marki's or anyone's."

"You could make a case for the supervisory board."

"Did I not do enough?"

"Oh, Carrots." Nick's claws dug into her. "You'd move city hall with your teeth if they asked you to, and they all know it. You did everything. More than anyone could have expected."

It was an old sport coat. Tweed. Rough against her cheek. But Judy didn't feel up to moving yet.

"Probably didn't do myself many favors along the way," she admitted. "Too much raw enthusiasm."

"We have been busy," Nick agreed. "With Boots and Whistler and all of it. We _'met or exceeded expectations,'_ I think is the board's term for it. But we were figuring us out along the way, too. Sometimes that's messy and distracting."

More guilt, because of course, _of course_ she had failed to consider how this might have torpedoed Nick's own shot at promotion. He wasn't that much her junior.

"You don't deserve this, Nick. I shouldn't be dragging you down here with me, too."

"No." Nick stiffened against her, and pulled her around so she had to look him in the eye. "Not like that, sweetheart. Yeah, nothing has changed, but _nothing has changed._ You're still Officer Hopps, but you're still Judy Hopps, too. Still Officer Judy Carrots Rescued-Nick-Wilde-From-Himself Good-Cop Best-Friend Perfect-Lover Carrots Hopps."

Judy's heart cramped. Nick squeezed her close and then got up.

"This was Fang's idea," he said. "And Claw's. You're supposed to be laughing at it where they can see, so make sure to save some for them."

He unbuttoned his coat and tossed it on the couch. It was a navy blue ZPD shirt, sure enough, but it looked custom-made. Instead of the department acronym, the big yellow block letters spelled out WORLD'S OKAYEST BOYFRIEND.

Judy stared, silent, because she worried if she tried speaking - or, indeed, laughing - she'd burst into tears.

It was a terrible joke, a very _Nick_ joke, but it was a private in-joke, too. One she wished they didn't need. She and Nick had gone through six different kinds of hell together to get where they were, and along the way they'd learned to talk to one another, to sort out stress and problems and fears together by asking: _are you okay?_

She owed him so much. So much more than he got sometimes, especially now. He was willing to look past their hangups to make this work, to risk his career and his brand-new reputation and his life for her, to drop everything and come find her when she was overreacting and remind her how much she mattered.

"There's one in the bag for you, too," Nick said at her silence.

"Nick-" Now she was crying, and that was okay. She pushed back into his arms, where he wrapped her up and pulled her close and growled soft reassurance. "I'm sorry, fox. I'm so stupid."

"Don't be," Nick said. His own voice was thick. "I am the luckiest fox alive. And I wouldn't change anything that has or hasn't happened for the world, Judy. None of it. I am so, so proud of you, just the way you are."

\---

It took Judy a while to get it all out, long enough that the drifted off together right there on the couch. Nick supported her weight on top of him and she pulled his fluffy tail on top of her like a blanket. When she did wake, she held his warmth close, in case he tried to escape.

He didn't, though. He never would, and she knew that.

Instead, they lay there and he played with her ears and she started to decide, slowly, that she could get past this after all. She'd made it this far on grit and determination and an enthusiasm she knew she'd only lost temporarily.

And everything she did from here on out, she wouldn't do alone. That was most important. There would be another round of staff considerations next year, and the year after that, but even if there weren't, even if she missed again - she knew she'd be happy and fulfilled because Nick would be right along with her.

She grabbed his paw and tucked it under her chin. He was so large that she could only ever play big spoon to parts of him. But scale had never been an issue for them. They'd always made it work.

"Here." He shifted under her and she heard his bag rustling again. But instead of a shirt, he held up a little white box above them, like a bulky pen case.

But it wasn't a pen sitting in the custom foam. Her eyes widened.

It was a flashlight, a serious-looking one with heat fins by the bezel and an integrated clip. It was sized perfectly for her paw, and it was powder-coated carrot orange.

"This is from all of us," he said. "And no, I don't care that you didn't actually get promoted. You were getting this anyway, because it's bugged me since I met you that you use a phone as a flashlight. Marki, too, as soon as I told her."

Judy turned the heavy tool around in her paws. "Nick, it had to cost a fortune."

"Fang called it _'surplus equipment budget,'_ so no, not really." He rumbled again, pleased with himself. "Marki hooked us up. Whatever she did last life, she still knows all the custom kitmakers. This thing is heirloom-quality. More lumens than I can count. I kind of want one myself."

The rubberized activation switch at the other end was, in an obnoxious touch that had to be Nick's doing, bright green. She toggled it and Nick yelped.

 _"Whoa!_ Sorry! I'm sorry, Nick-"

"It's also very effective, as you've just demonstrated." Nick rubbed his eyes. "So no more fumbling around in limos. Maybe if you'd nailed Raymond and Kevin with this thing way back when, we would have been able to make a run for it."

She had to giggle at that. "If we'd run from them, we wouldn't have gotten our lead to Manchas. It might have all stopped there."

"Maybe you're right," Nick said. His paws went over her again and pulled her close. "I'm glad it turned out this way."

Judy burrowed against his throat, the way she knew he loved, feeling a lot warmer and happier and more valued than she had any right to expect from Nick right now.

"Thank you."

"Only the best for Officer Judy Carrots Rescued-Nick-Wilde-From-Himself Good-Cop-"

She stuck a paw over his muzzle to shut him up, and he nibbled at her fingers.

"I have to make it up to them," she said, her ears twitching at his attentions. "This was selfish and stupid of me."

Nick's claws pricked, just so. He chased her paw with his nose. "They'll keep, I think. For at least an hour."

Judy pushed herself far up enough to see his face, and the set of his ears, and felt his tail curl around over her legs. She shivered.

"You think so?"

Nick kissed her, and his claws dug tighter. "Promise."


	9. How (not) to Fireworks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a reason the things are regulated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **BRIEF GRAPHIC VIOLENCE.** Firework mishaps.
> 
> Written in 90 minutes, with minimal copy editing. Fair warning.

He was an old llama with shady connections, and he was lucky he wasn't losing more than the arm.

"More pressure," Judy gritted.

"Working on it." Nick tried to keep his grip firm around what was left of the animal's limb. Judy cranked the improvised tourniquet tighter, breathing fast through her mouth in an effort to escape some of the smell.

Nick wasn't so lucky. He was getting all of it, like it or not: hot, sticky blood that made his gorge rise; the sulfur tang of expended propellant; even hot rubber where one of the stars must have embedded itself in a car tire somewhere.

The llama had cooked off an illegal firework - one of the big mortars, too, the ones only the professionals were supposed to be able to license. His lack of formal training was pretty obvious. He must have leaned over the tube after he'd lit the fuse.

Still, it could have been a lot worse. They'd showed what a direct hit from one of these things could do in training, just to make sure all the candidates took the risks of illegal fireworks seriously.

Judy would want to follow up, as soon as this guy was stable enough to answer questions. Right now, all he was up for was groaning as Judy did something to her handiwork.

"Take it easy, sir." Nick tried not to look at the arm on the street and grabbed for Judy's radio instead. His ears were still ringing from the low-altitude report. "Dispatch, Wilde. Where's ZMS?"

"Two minutes."

Nick eased off his pressure and blood didn't start leaking again. He sat back on his haunches and blew a shaky breath. Judy carried gloves, so she wasn't as bloody as she could have been, but she was still holding her paws carefully away from her body.

This wasn't how the evening was supposed to go. He and Judy were off duty for the night, early enough that they'd planned to go to Riverwalk and catch the Founders' Day fireworks. There was supposed to be a concert, too. Instead, they'd gotten this little unplanned first-responder refresher. Lucky llama.

And unlucky spectators. As the tunnel vision of the first aid spooled down, Nick could see the elderly tiger keeping a respectable distance, her paws on the shoulders of two little ibex kids with wide, wide eyes. It was a rougher Founders' Day than they deserved.

"Carrots, I'm going to go get statements. You okay?"

Despite it all, she could still work up a patient little grin for him. "Yeah. Thanks."

Nick got up and went over to the onlookers. He could sense Judy watching, and he felt for her. Plainclothes fox, with blood on his claws, talking to the little prey kids? He made sure his badge was visible on the chain around his neck.

"Hey, kids. You two okay?"

They nodded, silent.

The tigress couldn't help the fear in her body language as she looked over the scene. "He's going to be all right?"

"He should be, now." Nick looked down at the kids again. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"Mr. Wilson was going to show off some fireworks for the children." Her tail swept around her legs. "I know it's not technically legal, but it's their first chance to celebrate Founders' Day."

"You're not their biological parents."

"Christopher and Lisa are in foster care. Or will be. My name is Karina Denning. I run Heartwood Center for Children. Mr. Wilson lives nearby. I can show you the paperwork..."

"In a moment. Do you know where Mr. Wilson got his fireworks?"

"He hadn't said, except that it was going to be a big surprise."

Well, he wasn't wrong. Nick turned at the sound of wailing sirens as a ZMS van and a fire truck blew around the corner. Judy flagged them down and the medics jumped out to take over. He relaxed a bit.

"I'm sorry you all had to see this, Ma'am. We'll get him sorted out. But if he had any other fireworks, we do have to confiscate them."

She shook her head. "He told me he'd put everything into this one this year."

"Okay. I'll be back in a minute and I'll check the paperwork. Sit tight; maybe get the kids inside."

"Of course, Officer."

Nick jogged back to the ambulance, where the medics had already strapped the llama to a gurney and were maneuvering him inside. The arm, Nick noticed as he came up behind Judy, was already gone. A couple of firefighters with hazard gloves were treating the pavement.

"Foster care," he explained.

"Oh, poor kids."

"Yeah."

One of the medics waved them over. "Oh, hey, Hopps. We've got a wash station here. You're not hurt, are you?"

"Thanks, Grayson. No, we just witnessed it." Judy stripped her gloves and deposited them in the waiting biohazard bin. They took turns scrubbing their paws and arms in the antiseptic foam.

"Crummy start to Founders' Day," the gazelle said. "Lucky you two, getting the time off."

"Doesn't quite feel like it yet," Nick said.

The medic gave them a sympathetic smile and a clipboard with a standard incident form on it. "We've got to go. Keep the board. Bring it back to Highland once you've finished up. We'll hold onto your mortar tube."

"Go safe."

Grayson jumped in and pulled the ambulance door shut, and it took off. Nick took their clipboard over to the sidewalk, so as to not impede the firefighters with their scene.

"I'm going to have to start carrying a full first aid kit, with an actual tourniquet. So I don't run out of belts." Judy watched him fill it out. "Sorry, Nick."

"For what, exactly?" He smiled and nudged her. This always happened when she pulled them into something new. "For saving Mr. Wilson's life?"

"We're just always the ones it happens to, even when we're off duty. It's like trouble knows where we are. ZMS greets us by name now."

Sure, but it was for the right reasons. Nick smiled down at his rabbit, the one who had pulled him into this career, this entire life. Sometimes it was hard to balance the two. That they'd decided to spend it all together made it a guarantee.

But somehow, net _Better Place_ always seemed to increase when he was around Judy Hopps, and that made it all worth it. She'd taught him how to love helping other people, after a lifetime of looking out just for himself. It didn't matter that sometimes it got messy and intruded on their personal time.

Besides, it wasn't like they'd lost out on anything yet. The sun hadn't even gone down yet; the fireworks at Riverwalk weren't scheduled to start for another half-hour at least. Nick looked over at where Christopher and Lisa were sitting on their stoop, listening seriously as Mrs. Denning talked.

"They don't deserve memories like this," Judy said into his thoughts. "Any more than we do."

"No," Nick agreed. "But we can help there, too." He fished a couple of Junior Detective stickers out of his shirt pocket. "If we hurry. I'll bet you they've never seen a real fireworks show before."


	10. Occasion to try old Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pop culture tells me two significant others going clothes shopping together like this would probably be rare at best and a recipe for arguments and frostiness at worst.
> 
> Don't care. I've got a rabbit and a fox to ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [this wonderful piece](http://ky-jane.tumblr.com/post/141393886670/fancy-foot-work-putting-those-dress-ideas-to-use) by ky-jane over on tumblr.

Judy brought it up two days after they got the invitation.

"I don't have anything to wear."

Nick gave her an ear from where he was rummaging in her fridge for something that he could eat chilled. Early summers in Savanna Central were warm.

"Wedding formal," he said, making a lofty pronouncement of the second word. "I believe you. Your dress blues are the neatest thing you own."

"You're one to talk," she muttered. "At least you settled on the grey shirts. We can all stand to look at you without squinting now."

"Oh, thanks. You know I made the green palm print work."

He handed Judy one of the weird cucumber ice things she liked and sat next to her on the couch.

"I'll have to rent something," she said as she nibbled. "There's a place down on fourth."

"A chain."

"Well, yeah. I mean, I could ask Fru Fru where to go, maybe."

"Have you never done the wedding thing at home? I'd think with all those siblings you'd have had practice."

"Bunnies are a bit different. The bride and groom go all out, but the rest of us are focused on emotional support." Judy shrugged. "We see enough weddings and anniversaries and funerals that we don't worry about fancy quite as much."

Nick sometimes forgot, in the wonderful whirlwind that was their relationship, what they knew of each other and what they didn't. Judy was a farm girl-turned-cop, with a no-nonsense attitude to match. He loved her for it, as fiercely as she could love him. But he still hadn't expected her to be missing this little part of independent adulthood.

But like she said, he was one to talk. He'd been grifting around until she sorted him out; had had as much use for formal wear as she did. Less, even. There were no weddings or anniversaries to mark.

But his experience could help here.

"I know a guy," he said, and watched for her reaction.

Judy eyed him. "With an extensive collection of spare dresses for female rabbits."

He couldn't help the smile. "He'd make those, yeah. He makes everything."

\---

Carter Rhodes was one of the old guard in a small, small world of tailors. Big had put Stephane the Maitre d' onto him, and Stephane had put Nick onto him, the first time he'd had need of presentable clothing while they worked together, and Nick had realized at least one of Dad's old friends was still around.

It was a bit of a shock, the second first time, all those years ago. He'd just been a kit when his father ran his own alterations business. Rhodes had been in and out, as close to a brother as Nick's father had, and some things about him just hadn't changed in the intervening years.

The narrow store was still on the same corner, between two dark wainscoted walls, with worn green carpet and completely stuffed with suits and dresses on racks and mannequins, aimed mostly at mid-scale mammals on down. It smelled exactly the same, like rich fabric and elegant fragrance. Some of the help was new, but even the sign in the window was the same exact one Nick remembered from his childhood.

_BIG OR SMALL, DOESN'T MATTER AT ALL_

And Rhodes was right behind his desk as usual, sewing machine thrumming along beside him. The porcupine turned an amiable smile on them as Nick led Judy back into the store, but the surprise took its place.

"That's not little Nicholas Wilde."

Nick ducked his head in greeting. "Again, and all straightened out this time. Good to see you, Mr. Rhodes."

Rhodes leaned forward, both paws spread on the worn felt cut pad that made up most of the desk. "I think you ought to call me Carter by now, little Nick."

Nick smiled at the resigned fascination he could feel Judy giving off from here. "Right you are, sir. Carter."

"And you have me at a disadvantage, Miss..."

"Hopps," Judy said. "Judy Hopps. Good to meet you."

"The pleasure is all mine," Carter said. "I always hoped someone would come along to get Nick in line."

Judy's ear rotated toward Nick, the way it did when she wasn't sure exactly how to play a situation. She put up with way more of his introducing her to old friends than he had any right to ask her to, and each one was another round of _how much can I show this person?_ For what it was worth, Rhodes hadn't taken long to guess. Wouldn't have been fooled anyway.

And Rhodes - Carter - was as close to family as Nick was comfortable having. Nick reached for her shoulder, and in her surprise she actually looked up at him. It shifted to warmth quick enough.

"He doesn't make it easy," she said.

Carter came around down to them. "So what brings you back here?"

"We need your expert assistance," Nick said. "We've been invited to a wedding."

"Ha," Carter said. "Domestic pursuits for domestic times. And do you know what you'd like to wear? As a starting point."

Nick held a paw out to Judy, pads up.

"I've never had much occasion for it," she admitted.

"Tessa and I will get you sorted out, not to worry." Carter waved over at an otter who was folding shirts nearby, and turned to Nick.

"You know what you like, I expect."

"I'll find something."

"Oh, no." Judy's ears twitched. "Don't let him dress himself, that's a nightmare."

Carter burst out laughing. "No, I'm sure his tastes haven't improved much." He shooed Nick. "Go on."

\---

For years, Nick Wilde had dressed in such a way it caused more sensitive mammals physical pain.

He usually told himself it was because he didn't have the means to do otherwise. Sometimes he remembered, though.

Mr. Wilde - his father - was a tailor. Or had been. Nick didn't know if he was even still alive, much less where he might be now or what he was doing. Nick had been well on his way to following in those pawprints, too, right up until he'd disappeared, right when he'd needed him most.

Nick had lost the taste for nice fabrics, for complementary patterns. It had ceased to matter, just as his father had ceased to exist in his life. Dressing to kill became secondary to dressing to survive.

But as Nick walked through the familiar racks, it all started to come back. Not all of it was good, of course, but enough of it was different now. For new reasons. Some of this he could still pull off.

\---

Judy stood in the raised center of the little private fitting room, in beams of natural light as Carter opened the last of the blinds. She looked up from a pile of colorful dresses as Nick entered.

"What did you find?" he asked.

"They gave me-" her paws waved at the collection. "A lot. I don't know where to start."

"I'll help."

"Right." She cocked an eyebrow at the clothes in his arms. "At least you skipped the floral patterns. No jacket?"

Nick heard Carter's knowing chuckle as the porcupine made his way past them to the door. "Haven't seen little Nick in a jacket for a while. He swore them off a long time ago."

The door shut them in.

Nick smiled at her expression. "My dad was a tailor. He knew Rhodes. Carter."

"Oh." Judy's ears dropped, and there was a sudden sadness to her that Nick always hated feeling partly responsible for. "Good memories? Or bad?"

"Plenty of both." Nick joined her on the little platform, where a range of mirrors sent their reflections looking back at them. He squeezed her shoulder again. "So which one do you like?"

She held up something in flowing blue, with thin straps for her shoulders, and regarded it like she couldn't tell which way was up.

\---

They changed behind the screens and Nick was the first one out. He fiddled with the rolled cuffs and nearly missed it when Judy emerged.

She was staring at him, adjustments to her own dazzling dress forgotten.

"You've been holding out on me," she accused. "This entire time."

White shirt, white pants, dirty brown vest, neat burgundy tie: it was the most he was really comfortable with anymore. "Maybe a little."

"You _knew better._ I knew you dressed like that to get a rise out of people."

She was so cute - yes, cute - when she was angry, and trying not to look like she was taking him in. Nick winked.

"It got your attention, didn't it?"

"Nick, you're _really handsome."_

He felt his ears heat and his tail curl around one of his legs. "And you're pretty."

She looked down at herself to hide an uncertain smile. "I don't know where my paws go. And I worry I'd get cold."

"You could add a shawl or something. Francine's not going to care."

"Yes she is. She made it all stuffy and formal." Judy was turning in circles. "I don't get it. It's nice and everything, but what if I have to run?"

"Farm girl." Nick nosed at one of her ears as it went by.

"There's nothing wrong with my fashion sense tending toward _serviceable."_

"Hey, I'm not arguing." Nick smiled down at her. "I mean, I happen to love you in plaid and jeans more than any fox should, but there's a time and place-" he indicated her dress - "to look jaw-dropping, too."

She finally blushed, and Nick's grin widened.

\---

But she didn't like it enough. Or the next one, or the next one, or the one in green or the one in pink plaid or the one that made her 'look like a secretary.'

Nick offered advice and guidance where he could, and left her to it otherwise. It was not how a lifetime of songs and films and overheard bar chatter suggested a shopping trip with one's girlfriend should go. But Judy was special. They were special. They talked about everything.

Plus - and he wasn't sure she noticed this part yet - as time went on and the pile of possibilities shrank and shrank, something was changing in her. Her ears were higher. She was focused and curious. Her scent had sharpened, just subtly. Each shimmering example looked better than the last, and not because they were more beautiful or more intricate or better at all.

It didn't matter what Judy wore. Somewhere in there, she'd found the confidence to make anything look perfect. Nick had started to run out of words and trusted his ears and tail to do the talking.

Eventually, there was one left. Judy eyed it.

""Try it," Nick said.

"There's not much to it," she said. "I'm not the one supposed to be attracting attention, remember? It's for Francine." She held it up. "This looks like a 'look at me' dress."

"Just try it, sweetheart. Worst case, we'll get Francine to kick us out and all this will be moot. We can go sit in my apartment in scrubs, the way you wanted."

Judy rolled her eyes and disappeared behind the partition again to change.

Nick didn't mind that, the possibility of attending a wedding with Judy wearing something that made him more interested in her than what they were there to do. He saw how she was looking at him, too. And they were going to attract no small share of jokes and questions anyway, regardless of what they wore. They were a real couple now, and a lot of the world was starting to catch on. At a friend's wedding, in the company of friends, he was okay with that.

Judy reappeared, and his eyes widened.

He was very okay with that.

The only word he had for it was _flame._ Sure, he was getting poetic, but that was because his barriers were down. She'd been doing that recently, pulling dormant stuff like visiting Carter back to the surface, giving him the interest and the renewed courage to try old things again.

Nick was glad he'd done it.

Judy's last dress was a single seamless piece from top to bottom, grading from red-orange at her shoulders down to a dusky smoke at her feet. A slash came up nearly to her hip, making the whole thing shift like liquid as she moved.

But it was her expression that sealed it. The light in her eyes that hadn't been there before. Nick felt the stupid grin crawling along his face.

"You like it?" She asked.

"You," he said, "are _stunning."_

Her ears rotated toward him and flushed.

"I'm serious, Carrots." Nick gave up and moved closer to take her paw, and place his free one on her hip. He guided her gaze to the array of mirrors so she could see herself. "And I think you like it, too."

"I do." Judy chewed her lip. "It's so _flowy._ But it's long."

"Carter will make it fit you like it's not even there."

"I hope so. Francine's going to make us dance, and I'd trip all over this otherwise."

"You would not." He raised her paw and pulled her to the center of the platform. "Here."

She looked up at him, surprised and a little tense, what with one more thing on top of the afternoon, on top of what Nick was fairly certain was something she really hadn't tried before.

But that confidence was still there, and as they started it warmed and shifted again and he gripped her just a bit tighter, because he could see she _felt_ it. She'd mastered even this already, as only she could.

Nick dipped his muzzle to the base of one of her ears and held it there.

"Thank you," she murmured.

"I told you."

They swayed slow, him holding her in careful paws and her trying not to step on his. She kept frowning down at them, as if uncertain of how to follow his lead.

"Nick."

"You're doing fine, sweetheart. Step, step, step."

She pulled him to a halt, and looked like she was suppressing amusement.

"You don't know how to dance."

He smiled at her. "Not at all."

This time the laugh did bubble out of her. She reached up and hooked him by the tie, so he had to stoop down to her level, and now the fire in her eyes made the dress around her shoulders pale into insignificance.

"Okay, fox," she said. Her fierce little kiss stole his breath. "My turn."


	11. Mr. Renard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Normally Mr. Renard been the villain in Judy's little stories growing up, chasing the rabbits and spoiling their picnics and scaring them with his teeth.
> 
> Now his job was more solemn than Judy would have liked: a sad, worn stand-in for one Nicholas Wilde. The sticker helped the likeness a little bit.

Mr. Renard had come into a new role.

Normally he'd been the villain in Judy's little stories growing up, chasing the rabbits and spoiling their picnics and scaring them with his teeth.

Now his job was more solemn than Judy would have liked: a sad, worn stand-in for one Nicholas Wilde. The sticker helped the likeness a little bit.

But it wasn't quite the same, now that Judy had rescued it from its crumpled ball on the floor of the headquarters lobby and carefully smoothed it out. One of the corners had lost its stick entirely, and little cracks chased through the shiny gold foil.

It had endured so much. Wind and rain and even a dive in the reservoir, and it held on through all of it, until intentional claws had pulled it off and discarded it. There was something symbolic about that.

And it was her fault.

Judy hugged the little stuffed fox to her chest and curled up on her bed, wishing for the umpteenth time in these few short days that she could take back what had happened. Since Nick had left she'd just been going through the motions, filing reports and walking beat and checking the occasional meter. Then she would come home and eat because she had to and then she would sit here, turning Mr. Renard around and around in her paws, as if he might provide answers.

How had she gone so wrong?

It wasn't even enough to stew in the pity, because she knew she had no ground to stand on. She couldn't lament how he'd balanced her naivete, or how he'd given her more help than she deserved. It wasn't about her.

She'd done real damage to Nick, and to look that fact straight-on was her penance.

She didn't have friends in the city, just colleagues. It was too early for lasting relationships, or had been until these last days. Nick had taught her things, in his own way, once they'd started to open up. On fairness and commitment and how and when to challenge authority. Yes, he was a fox. But in the last whirlwind 48 hours, he'd proved to her that there was more to him than what he had presented to the world.

Judy had been lucky to witness that. She'd found someone improbable, someone interesting and witty and much more than she expected or deserved under all that armor. Someone who might turn into something more than a witness, more than an acquaintance, just for her.

And she'd crushed him. In one thoughtless moment she'd ignored everything their cooperation had taught her.

But it was worse, Mr. Renard's sewn-on eyes seemed to say. Until she'd opened her mouth on that podium Nick had looked so happy and hopeful, and Judy had dared to think maybe just some small part of that was because she was the one giving him that application.

She wanted Nick to look at her like that.

The thought - so forward, so unprecedented, so wrong - was enough to stop her breath.

But she couldn't deny it. This was about accepting what she'd done. What she'd thought.

Judy Hopps, rabbit, go-getter and all of one week a career police officer, wanted her only friend back, for reasons she was scared were more than friendship. She wanted to be close beside a fox again.

Those were the parts she remembered the most: leaning on the DMV counter, sandwiched between polar bear enforcers, trapped in a tangle of vines in Rainforest district, climbing through the sewers together underneath an abandoned hospital. There was some primal thrill to picking that up. It had changed, even in this short time, too: from the careful knowledge that he was playing with her reactions and enjoying the ride, to the sensation of his strong heartbeat pressed to hers there in the rain, to the conspiratorial closeness of facing the unknown and realizing there was someone there supporting her now because he wanted to.

There was a word for this. But Judy couldn't think it now, not when it was such a betrayal. She'd had that chance, even if she hadn't recognized it for what it was. Now it was gone.

The sticker crinkled under her fingers. Its gold flashed reflected streetlights, misty now thanks to her blurred vision.

She would never get the chance to tell Nick what he had come to mean to her. She would never get the chance to apologize.

All she had was Mr. Renard, Junior Detective. She pulled him as close as she could, and wondered if it would ever be enough to fill the hole in her heart.


	12. Change of Plans [Thematic Thursday 08.04]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Thematic Thursday.
> 
> For reference, if you care about these things: their tent resembles [this MSR.](https://d1l67pfsx3wblg.cloudfront.net/images/product/large/Freelite_2.jpg)

It was a beautiful campsite - tucked inside a stand of ponderosa pine trees, right at the bend of the river where the water rushed over age-smoothed boulders. In the evening, the sun would light up the whole valley below them.

Assuming the torrential rain let up before then.

Judy made the last of their equipment safe underneath the largest tree and ran to help Nick with the tent.

He gestured at the spread fabric, and a peal of thunder swallowed his words.

"What?"

"I can't find the stakes!"

Judy pulled her hood a bit tighter and squinted at him. "The stakes come last! Worry about getting something we can put the rainfly over first."

He had two of the tent's three finicky poles slotted into their guides. She held them steady while he jammed the last one into place, and the tent sprang almost into its assembled form. He'd missed one of the hooks that pulled the ceiling mesh up against the pole, but he just made an exasperated noise and scrambled for the rainfly.

Judy helped him buckle it down at each corner. The rain started drumming on the impervious surface instead of hissing through the mesh.

They grabbed their packs and threw them unceremoniously through the tent's main door. Nick - gallant, considerate and soaked completely through his fur - held the loose fabric of the atrium aside so she could dart into the shelter, and staked out at least that one corner of the fly so water wouldn't run into the tent.

Inside, it was even louder, like sitting in a bubble of white noise. The rain thrummed in sheets on the fly and streaked down the sides. But at least it was dry.

Nick crouched awkwardly in the atrium and yanked his pullover off. "Give me your coat."

"What?"

"It's wet," he said. "I'll-" He stopped and shook himself. Water misted through the mesh of the door. "I'll hang it up here so it doesn't drip everywhere."

Judy wriggled out of it and passed it over. Nick hung their clothes over the inside of the pole and crawled in beside her.

They sat, paws braced back on the yielding nylon floor, and looked at one another. Nick's ears rotated, mapping out the enclosed space.

"Sorry," he said.

They jumped at another wall of thunder, and Judy had to laugh. "How many years on the streets, and you never once set up a tent?"

"I spent most of that time downtown," he said. "Where you can see it coming, and there are plenty of awnings." He rubbed at moisture on one of his ears. "We should have tried it out before. In the store, or at your apartment."

"You're a mess. That'll teach you to not bring rain gear."

"It's in the bottom of my pack."

"Of course." Judy opened their bags and started passing over ground pads.

To be fair, the rain had ambushed them. The weather up here in the alpine district wasn't engineered the same way it was down in the lower elevations. It was more natural, like the storms Judy remembered as a kid growing up on the farm. She still knew how to handle it. Nick's street smarts didn't extend to the backcountry, it seemed.

Not that this really counted as backcountry, either. It was maybe half an hour's hike from the trailhead. Judy still had cell reception.

But the storm - fierce, and _loud_ , far colder than any lowlands rain - called for a rapid change of plans. Instead of exploring the area like she'd hoped to, they were staying put for the duration. It wasn't the worst thing in the world - if she was going to be stuck up a river valley in a two-mammal tent until morning, Judy wanted to be stuck there with Nick.

The sleeping bags cut off the last of the chill from the ground underneath the tent, and Judy couldn't help but settle down a bit. These, at least, were still dry, and after a couple of miles of hiking it did feel good to lie back and listen to the rain. Nick had pulled his baselayer off, but his fur was still matted where the rain had drenched him.

"Hang on," Judy said. She reached up and rummaged for the little camp towel in her pack. Nick took it and dried vigorously - and his fur went from matted to fluffed out and awry. Judy hid her smile.

"'See the mountains,'" he grumbled, his voice muffled as he attacked his headfur. "'Beautiful alpine vistas and trails.' That brochure lied, Carrots."

"They're still there," Judy said. She waved a vague paw out the atrium, where the torrent cut visibility to about 50 feet. "Just more damp than usual."

"Did the food survive, at least?"

They'd brought more than they needed, just in case, packed in a little hard-sided container at the bottom of her bag. She broke out her celery and hummus, and handed him his pouch of tuna and crackers. Nick plucked at it with a delicate claw, and glanced over at her.

"Sorry about the smell."

Judy waved his apology away. "I'm not going to make you eat outside. Not tonight, anyway."

It wasn't terrible, either. Spending so much time with Nick had blunted her sensitivity to fish and eggs, enough that she hardly noticed the scent anymore. In the cramped tent, it smelled more of warm, damp fox than dinner anyway - not that she minded.

They ate and resealed the cooler and the storm rolled on above them, casting the tent into dimness as it went. The lightning was creeping closer, changing the timing between strikes and thunder enough each time that it kept taking them by surprise.

"We going to be safe under these trees?" Nick asked. He watched the ceiling.

"I think so. They're nice and tall, and we're not too close to their bases."

Nick nodded and settled back on his elbows next to her. "It just makes me think of-"

_crack_

That one was right on top of them, or near enough. Judy gasped and squeezed her eyes shut as the _boom_ assaulted her ears, loud enough to make them ring. Nick, looking fairly spooked himself, reached for her.

"You okay?"

"Fine," she said, even though she couldn't tell if the echoing rumble was the thunder working its way down the valley, or coming from inside her own head. "It hurts a bit when it gets that loud."

He smiled and brushed one paw across the base of her right hear. His pads were warm. "I should have packed earmuffs."

"Please." She narrowed her eyes.

It didn't get any louder, thankfully. The worst of the storm seemed to have left them behind as last of the daylight slipped away - though Nick was ready for the big strikes now, and fast enough to cover her ears for her. It was obnoxious, but not obnoxious enough for her to want him to stop, and they both knew it.

They wound up together like that, Judy sitting in his lap on top of his sleeping bag, against the warm fur of his chest. Nick crossed his arms in front of her to keep her close, his head down so he could nose at her ears, and they watched the lightning flicker on the tent.

"First weekend we had in months, it feels like, and we get rained out," he said. "I feel like I should apologize."

"It's not your fault," Judy murmured. "This is a bit of an adventure, too."

"I know you wanted to go see the pointy rocks."

"Pinnacles. They'll be there tomorrow."

"Just more damp than usual."

"Shut _up,_ fox." Judy pushed back against him, and he chuckled and squeezed her tighter, and carefully tipped them over.

Nick's sleeping bag was the larger of the two, and added a wonderful extra layer to things. Judy didn't usually nest up all that much, not when Nick was with her. But tonight felt like an exception. Between the material of the bag reflecting their combined body heat, and the softness of Nick's fur, and steady support of his arms and legs and even his tail around her, and the rain on the tent and the rumbling thunder - Judy felt very cozy indeed. She wriggled against him.

"Squirmy."

"Just getting comfortable."

"You and me both." He held her still long enough to slide his careful claws under her clothes, against her fur, and plant an extended kiss on her muzzle. There was a contented rumble in his throat. "Love you."

"I love you, too."

"We'll get up early tomorrow," Nick said. "To make up for lost time."

She raised an eyebrow. _"You're_ going to get up early tomorrow."

Nick didn't miss a beat. "You'll get me up early tomorrow."

"I will."

"Okay, good."

She didn't know if she was going to want to get up, actually. The bed was so warm, and the rain had dropped to a patter against the tent, and the lightning was a distant, strobing spectacle.

The last thing she remembered before she drifted off was Nick's gentle muzzle against her ears.


	13. Crank Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From a prompt by [@imrix](http://imrix.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr.

Nick had a bad habit of screening his calls really hard. He could count the people he wanted and needed reliable contact with on one paw.

So when the UNKNOWN designator came up on his smartphone screen, Nick didn't give it much thought. He put it back on his desk and let it buzz through to voicemail.

They'd been three days digging out of the South Canyon Raid Paperwork Crater, as he'd decided to call it. Judy had stopped fighting him on the title partway through day one. They were almost done now, too. As soon as forensics got back to them on whatever these fibers were they'd be able to put the finishing touches on it and - move on to whatever onslaught of other paperwork replaced it. For tonight, though, they were done.

Nick reached back to give the chair behind him a little shake, and smiled when Judy twitched at the disruption to her balance.

"What?" She dragged the syllable out.

"Want some food? Pete's or something?"

"I want ten hours of sleep," she said. "Even dead-end stakeout is better than this filing."

"Next time, then." Nick let the disappointment slip away. He and Judy were still relatively new partners, and despite a comfortable early relationship built on shared jokes and shared sarcasm they were still figuring out where the lines were. That was fine by Nick. He was just happy to have someone to call a close friend for once - not that he'd ever admit that to her.

They clocked out and took the evening train back toward their respective apartments. Nick stayed on past his stop, though, and Judy, across from him, raised her eyebrows and rotated her ears toward him when he held his seat instead of heading for the door.

"There's a place one block past you that does nice fish tacos," he said.

"Oh."

They walked together as far as her apartment, and she bid him good night with a little smile, and he retrieved his dinner. It wasn't until he was on his way back to the train station that he checked his phone and saw the message waiting icon.

"Nicholas Wilde? My name's Pronk Oryx-Antlerson." There was a beat. "Your partner, Judy, is in love with you. Please do something about it. She's our neighbour, and we're tired of listening to her try to work out how to tell you."

Nick stopped, right there on the sidewalk. The automated post-voicemail menu buzzed in his ear, and he didn't register any of it.

_Good joke, Pronk._

Nick had been on the receiving end of plenty of crank calls in his life, and on the sending end of even more of them. The trick was to make them just believable enough, and this one had certainly dragged his attention around like nothing else. But they weren't supposed to be verifiable. He looked up at the old building. Pronk was familiar, as neighbors of friends went. Nick had spent a week living in Judy's apartment before he started work on the force, listening to Pronk and his roommate bicker and... do other things.

_Who to approach,_ the thought came before he could stomp it out. No. This was the last thing he needed to get into now. Nick forced his paws to start up again, so he wouldn't miss the train.

Pronk was nothing if not open-minded. Nick knew that. And he seemed he had a sense of humor to match. But he had to know that kind of suggestion was awfully loaded. Quite the thing to feed to two cops, and maybe even more of a thing to feed to a pair of predator-prey cops.

The train ride blurred by. The walk to his apartment blurred by. Dinner blurred by. And still it wouldn't leave him alone.

Nick listened as he prepared for sleep; six and seven and ten more times.

It matched what he knew of Pronk's personality. His voice was even with an undercurrent of sarcastic wit. Cadence and delivery were good. Perfect, even. If this was a fake, Pronk would make a great con artist.

But how was Nick supposed to determine that? He could just call back, but he wanted to do this face to face to get a better read on the oryx. And he couldn't just talk to Pronk out of nowhere. He had no reason to be in Judy's building unless she was there with him. Her landlady would recognize him, but nobody else would. He didn't know Pronk's schedule. Couldn't exactly figure it out without triggering suspicion at work. A warrant was obviously out; there was no crime to attach it to. But Nick wondered if he could make Pronk sign something, some affidavit.

And then it was three in the morning and Nick realized he was being very _Judy_ about this whole thing. He stared accusingly at the bedside clock.

The evidence was right there, if he cared to look at it. Nick was currently very good at _evidence_. The training was only a few months old.

The call was easy to spot as fake. Dangerous to attempt in the first place. And there were the months he'd spent with Judy since they'd started working together. The time he'd spent on the couch in her apartment, the one they both called 'his.'

The time she'd followed him out to the bridge that night, where they'd gotten closer than he'd expected and he'd done inadvisable things to her ears with his muzzle.

The couch she kept in his apartment, now.

From this tired angle it all pointed to something different. Something he didn't really want to look too closely at, even with the creeping pressure. He was Nick Wilde and he didn't think about those sort of things.

It had all been in the moment. Things had moved onto a new equilibrium, when Nick joined the force and they'd become so instantly busy. Bogo loaded them so far down with patrol duty and weird investigative paperwork they didn't have time to sort out anything but how to be partners. They were good at working on it together. It was fun, even. But it was work. Not - anything else.

And yet it fit.

_Except_ \- yes, this was it. Except long-term planning wasn't something Nick did, not even after he'd secured a stable career for probably the first time in his life. That was a big enough step for now, thanks. Sure, he worked with a partner and made concessions and changes for her, even considered her a good friend. Teased her incessantly. Watched her back. Rubbed her back sometimes, after long days bent over the endless evidence forms.

But those were things partners did. She did the same for him. They'd do the same regardless of who they were partnered with. If it hadn't been Judy, Nick would have dropped everything to follow whichever charismatic, determined, considerate little meter maid bunny _had_ offered him a chance to turn things around, to answer that unspoken prompt and prove that yes, he was more than just a sly fox and that he could _mean something_ to someone else.

Nick settled back against the pillow, reassured. He could still convince himself of anything. It was a good skill to keep sharp, even now that he had an actual job to wake up for tomorrow - and a partner to actually treat to dinner.


	14. Short Hop [Civil Enforcement Command AU]

“Seals,” came the call. On the cabin PA, if you please, because their pilot wasn’t even doing them the courtesy of opening the flight deck hatch to yell it muzzle-to-muzzle.

That’s what Nick liked to think, anyway. But then he got a bit defensive when he was nervous. And his partner always noticed.

Judy leaned over to slap his gloves against his chest plate. He took them and glanced at her in thanks. She already had her helmet on, so he juggled the gloves to don that first. The private channel telltale was already glowing.

“What?”

“It’s just a mass jump,” she singsonged.

Nick gritted his teeth. _Just a mass jump_ , she said. Just his third short hop ever, because until he’d joined CEC he hadn’t had anything close to the resources to even leave Ceres. Now they were set to skip all over the solar system, and Nick still wasn’t looking forward to that part.

CEC’s patrol gunships were the most cost-effective way to move small groups of mammals, like their investigative teams. Tritium fuel was expensive, and the government wasn’t about to plunk down for something big enough for artificial gravity. Not for the little old cops.

And for relatively short trips, like this one, it wasn’t even economical to gas the passengers. Nick wouldn’t mind being in dreamland for the trip. His brain wouldn’t know or care. But no.

Nick paused the self-pity long enough to devote full attention to his seals check. Judy’s chair rotated toward him from across the aisle. He pinged her computer and read the return messages.

“Green seals, green air.”

“Green and green,” Judy confirmed for him, and tugged at his harness to check its slack. “Did you drink something? You’ll feel better.”

“No.”

_“Nick.”_

“No time,” he said. “You know Bogo; he’d launch us with the fleet’s railguns if he thought it would get us to Phobos in one piece.”

“It’s supposed to be part of your standard kit.”

“Then I expect it’s in my pack somewhere. You checked my pack, right?”

Her sigh sent static rushing over the channel. “How’s that go? _‘You’d lose your head if it weren’t attached to your neck?’_ ”

Nick froze. “Judy, _please_ tell me you remembered to pack my head.”

She didn’t broadcast the laugh, but Nick saw her shoulders shaking anyway as she dug below her seat in her own backpack.

“Thirty seconds,” the pilot called on the tac channel. “Check your helmets again. No sick in my cabin.” Out the little viewport built into the ship’s gullwing hatch, Nick saw asteroids and docking spars wheeling as they rolled, and looked away before his inner ears came unglued again.

“Here.” Judy nudged him with her own soft-sided bottle.

She was right, of course.  Nick popped his seals long enough to chomp on the bite valve. 

It wasn’t exactly voluntary, but something in him really, really hated mass jumps. They gave him headaches more severe than the average most mammals got, and sometimes he got dizzy - so dizzy he couldn’t even get his boots under him after reversion. All the training with AG plates and the centrifuge didn’t capture the subtleties of being squeezed like toothpaste out of a tube.

And it didn’t help that when mass drives went wrong, they went wrong hard enough to turn entire ships into so much iron filings. Nick had checked the service interval on this particular gunship as soon as they’d gotten their transit orders, just to be on the safe side. Judy had pretended not to notice.

But she did notice, and Nick was convinced she did care. She wouldn’t give him her water otherwise. Lucky her. She never seemed to have trouble with the pressures involved.

There were two other gunships in a rough line out the window now. As Nick watched, the furthest flared with a bubble of distortion and vanished. The elegance belied the violence in this case - even in the near-vacuum out there a bone-deep _thump_ translated to the cabin.

“At least it’s not long jumps,” Judy said. “The angles are right this time. Ceres to Phobos is three. We’ll be done in as many hours.”

“You’re very reassuring.” Nick rammed his helmet back into place and checked that his seat was locked in its forward position.  "If I didn’t know better, I’d say you almost liked these things.“

"I like watching you squirm.”

“I have trouble with standard jumps, you have trouble with the ones they have to gas us for,” Nick said. “Or are we just going to ignore that time I had to carry you off the ship when we hit Triton?”

“Not my fault they got my weight wrong.”

 _Thump_. A stiffer punch to the chest this time. Two gone.

Nick heard the drives spooling, and started resigning himself to the hours of high-G abuse. Their pilot would be counting soon.

Judy locked her own seat forward. “You’ll be fine.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean it.”

Nick closed his eyes. “If I pass out, do me a favor and wake me yourself. Don’t let this flight crew do it. They sound mean.”

“You got it, slick.”

And Nick couldn’t be sure over the roar of the mass centrifuges, or the counting of the pilot, or the blood in his ears -

But he thought, in those last seconds before the jump, before he closed the channel, that he might have heard Judy take a deep breath and hold it.


	15. Following up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From an anonymous prompt on Tumblr.

_Tick-tick-tick._

_Tick-tick-tick._

Nick’s ear twitched, across from her.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

He leaned back from the chair he had reversed, so he could rest his arms on its back, and eyed the carrot pen Judy kept bouncing against her notepad. “If you say so.”

Judy stopped and put the pen down - and picked it right back up again.

She was fine, but she was nervous, too. Their latest case wasn’t all that high-profile - just petty vandalism, mostly - but a couple days into their research Judy had recognized the stylized ram skull symbol the perpetrators had left as a calling card. The last time that had showed up _was_ during a high-profile case - and that was why they were here.

“She won’t be cooperative.”

“I imagine not,” Nick said. He cracked a smile. Judy didn’t know any other canines who could make that look reassuring. “Relax.”

“After what she did to you?”

“What she thought she did,” Nick corrected. “We won that little battle of the minds. She bought the whole thing.” He looked down at his uniform. “And this ought to shake her up a bit, too. You do what you do best, and I’ll distract her with my air of reformed competence. _Judy-Hopps-Bad-Cop._ ”

“You’re not a bad cop.”

“Thank you.” Nick inclined his muzzle. “She doesn’t know that, though.”

Of course Nick was going to treat this like a con. It was what he did. But Judy tapped her pen and worried for him anyway. They didn’t talk much about that afternoon in the museum, but when they were alone - whe he’d called her from the academy after long physical training sessions, or after their first big footchase last week - sometimes it came up. Sure, Nick hadn’t actually been dosed with Nighthowlers, but he’d arguably come off worse than she had for the little adventure. He might be a predator, but she didn’t think he liked having to remind her.

The door opposite buzzed and Judy heard heavy bolts scraping in the frame. A towering rhino she didn’t recognize ducked through, surveyed the secure interview room as if Judy and Nick might be threats, and stepped out of the way to admit the subject of their detour down here.

Even months later, Dawn Bellwether still had that infuriating little habit of adjusting her glasses to better squint at whoever she was looking at. Judy got a burst of adrenaline as the sheep recognized her, and it only sharpened as she turned to Nick. Her eyes widened.

_“You.”_

Nick leaned forward on his arms and treated Bellwether to the full force of his bland cynicism. “Sorry, have we met?”

“ZPD must be getting _desperate_.”

“Take a seat, Ms. Bellwether.” Judy held out a paw. “We have some questions to ask you.”

“I don’t see why I should discuss anything with you.”

Judy didn’t, either, to be honest. The courts had been hard on Bellwether the first time around - even with a majority prey judicial board, she was looking at decades behind bars for orchestrating the plot to render predators savage and drive a supremacist agenda through the civic instability that followed.

She might get that sentence knocked down a bit, if she had anything useful to share about their current case, but a handful of years one way or the other wasn’t likely to make much difference. Bellwether would be here for a long time, and she knew it.

Still, they had to try. Judy glanced at Nick, who was managing to project both quiet reassurance to her and nonchalance to everyone else, and arranged her own notes.

“There have been a series of burglaries and vandalisms across the city in the last week,” she started. “Businesses all over are getting targeted. Pawn shops, jewelry stores, electronics - the only thing they all have in common are the symbols the perps leave behind.” She pulled a photo of the skull logo out of the file and turned it around. “Do you recognize this?”

“No.”

“Come on, Dawn.” Nick shifted. “It was all over your henchrams’ clothes.”

“And?”

“You’re more perceptive than that, former mayor. Except for maybe telling blueberries from toxic extract. Do you know where it comes from?”

Judy couldn’t really blame Nick for pushing it, but she wished he wouldn’t. This was going to be hard enough, getting information out of Bellwether when they had nothing to motivate her with.

“I suggest you start at the Cloven Hoof down in the Meadowlands,” Bellwether snapped. “For best results, go alone and late at night.”

ZPD already had a couple of sheep there undercover most nights, actually. The symbol did show up occasionally, but no one seemed interested in talking about it.

“What does it mean?” Judy asked.

“How should I know?”

“All of your accomplices wore it, one fashion or another.” Judy pulled out more photos. “And we’ve never seen it anywhere but on sheep.”

“How _taxonomist_ of you, Officer Hopps.”

That one was to be expected, but it still stung. Judy had to stare at her pen and take a moment to focus. “Those are the facts, for now,” Judy said. “Bellwether, we’re trying to keep this from getting any worse. Business owners are getting nervous. We’re getting copycats. One of these days someone’s going to get caught in the act, and we really don’t want it to come to shooting.”

“That’s not my problem.” Bellwether looked between them. “Maybe ZPD should be dedicating more resources to this case, if it’s that much of a priority.”

“You really want blood on your hooves, Bellwether?” Nick didn’t make it a threat - he was as calm and controlled as ever, just asking the yes-or-no hypothetical.

“Have you considered that’s what the city might want?” the sheep shot back. “You cops, Lionheart, the whole administration - it all bent over backward for some high ideal that puts more mammals at risk than it would ever help. They’re starting to catch on, and you’re not going to be able to stop it.”

Judy gritted her teeth. Even the threat of violence wasn’t enough. Bellwether was unbalanced, and still much more ruthless than she appeared. This was just more of what she wanted.

And she looked so scornful and satisfied, too, just as she had when she was leering down at them in the museum. She couldn’t see it any other way, and she didn’t care who that hurt.

“Starting to get it, are you?” Bellwether smiled behind her glasses. She turned to stare at Nick. “It’ll sink in, I’m sure. Maybe not today, maybe not now. But you’re on borrowed time.”

“You’re wrong,” Judy said. She gathered her notes, suddenly very tired of trying to drag anything else out of someone so cruel. “We proved it once, and we’ll prove it again.”

Bellwether sneered.

“Get her out of here,” Judy told the guard. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Nick. “And make sure she knows when we shut this little ring down.”

—

The sunlight was a welcome change from the sterile fluorescent overheads in the prison, but Bellwether’s words had wormed their way into Judy’s head, and now they seemed to filter everything out here, too.

Had they been willfully blind? The nighthowler plot had triggered protests and tension, but was it just an excuse? The city seemed calmer than ever now. If Bellwether was right - if there was resentment over predator-prey divides waiting for an excuse to boil to the surface - it wouldn’t have vanished with her arrest.

But Judy couldn’t help but look for it anyway, and she hated it. Hated that Nick was quiet and careful beside her for the rest of their shift, until she talked him into ordering takeout to her apartment where they would be alone.

She ended the call to Moe’s and the quiet of her room roared back in around them. They sat on the couch that took up most of the space now, more than even her bed.

“Ten minutes or so,” she said.

“That’s fine.”

“You know she’s wrong, Nick.”

Here, his ears flickered, because this was maybe the one place he didn’t have to hide everything.

“I do.”

“It doesn’t matter what the rest of them think.”

“I know, Carrots.” Nick’s smile was still more forced than Judy would have liked. “I’ve always known that. Or at least I have since you dragged me onto the force.”

“Happy to help, then, I guess.”

“Well, I still hate waking up at the crack of dawn. Sometimes I still hear reveille in my sleep.”

“That’s never going away,” she told him, and grimaced. “Sorry.”

She tipped over on the couch to lean against his shoulder, and she could feel it working. His armor was dropping, piece by piece. The cynicism would stop, and the jokes, and he would eventually act on it, the way she wanted him too. This was supposed to be time for them, now.

“Don’t let her get to you, either.” Nick tilted his muzzle down at her, and shifted so she’d be more comfortable against him. His tail had wrapped around her. “Yeah? She’s not worth that.”

They wouldn’t have been doing their jobs if they hadn’t followed up. It was a good way to think about it - Bellwether was a potential resource now. That Judy and Nick were a little microcosm of everything she hated just made her focus her attention more, was all.

But she was wrong. Dead wrong. And every time Judy worried about predators and prey, or about what everyone thought about a fox working with a rabbit, Nick was there to remind her of that.

“Yeah.”

They wouldn’t have to go back, at least. They’d beat this case, too; word would get back to Bellwether eventually. That would be enough.

And for now, Judy thought as she leaned back against her fox, even that could wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read the next part of this story [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6727384/chapters/21003353).


	16. Pawpsicles Were Never This Complicated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finance was a strange thing to hang up on, especially since Nick usually did have an easy confidence whenever he attacked something his new career presented him with. He liked the opportunity to be thorough and by the book, now that he had the time. Maybe this was just too personal. Something else he’d never had to sit down and do before.

She woke when the bed finally grew cold beside her.

Judy didn’t have to turn her head to know Nick wasn’t there anymore. He’d been hung up on the paperwork all week, even in the time they usually spent together after work. And now, it seemed, with the light from his little kitchen bouncing around the partial wall and onto the ceiling above the bed, it was bugging him even when they were supposed to be asleep.

Judy slipped out from under the sheets, pulled Nick’s shirt a little tighter around her shoulders and padded across the apartment.

He was right where she’d last seen him, before she’d dragged him away from the table and to bed. To be fair, Nick _had_ dropped it, for at least a little while - long enough to kiss her goodnight properly, and snuggle close and drift off.

“There is such a thing as too responsible.”

Nick’s ears turned first as she came up behind him. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Yes you could.” She climbed onto the chair next to him and gave him an understanding kiss on the cheek. “You just don’t want to leave this until the morning.”

“I’ve never had to actually do this. I blame wanting to get it right on you.” Nick dropped his pen and turned to her properly. His arms were warm. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“It’s fine. Now that I’m up, maybe I’ll make some tea and help.”

Nick looked like he could use the help, too, and not just because he was disheveled and bleary-eyed from restless sleep. Progress, it seemed, was coming slow - if at all. Nick looked like he didn’t know where to start. Even the Southview case hadn’t had this many gaps in the financials, and that little ring had been _trying_ to hide its activity.

He looked solemn. “I’m the nocturnal one. You actually do have time to get some rest.”

“Too late, slick. I’m teaching you something new tonight.”

She went to the counter and started his little electric kettle. It simmered, and she watched him scratch his muzzle and shuffle through the dozens of forms again.

Finance was a strange thing to hang up on, especially since Nick usually did have an easy confidence whenever he attacked something his new career presented him with. He liked the opportunity to be thorough and by the book, now that he had the time. Maybe this was just too personal. Something else he’d never had to sit down and do before.

“I don’t suppose the financial team at work will just fill all this out for me,” he said.

Judy smiled. “You and I and everyone else would do that if we could. They’d never make progress on their actual work. Lemon or Earl Grey?”

“Lemon.”

She arranged mugs. “Did you call the banks? The courthouse?”

“The ones that were still open. Nothing.”

“Then we go line by line.”

He was watching in mock horror. “Is this what it’s going to be like? For the rest of time?”

“The more you make the worse it gets,” Judy confirmed. “Better hope you never get promoted.”

“Great.”

She smiled again and pressed his mug into his paws. “The good news for you is it will never be this bad again. You’ll have somewhere to start next year.”

Nick sipped and conceded the point.

“From the top, then.” Judy sat right in his lap, so his muzzle fit between her ears, and picked up the pen from where he’d left it on the table. She wiggled it between her fingers. “Form 1040. Individual income.”


	17. Jump

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The stairwell at the end of the fourth floor hallway led to the roof, and right between the exit and the brick wall of the taller rowhome next to Judy's building there was a little concrete patio. Nick looked satisfied.
> 
> "I figured there would be something like this up here."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [thoseotherthings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoseotherthings/pseuds/thoseotherthings).
> 
> This is set a little bit less than a week after the museum scene.

Judy knew it was courteous to wait, but she was so hungry, and the cucumbers had just the right amount of seasoning, and there was enough here that she ought to be able to stretch it out for the whole meeting.

Still, she was halfway through her salad before there was a touch of familiar presence at her side, and she looked over to see Nick Wilde grinning down at her progress.

"You said noon."

Judy made a salad-muffled noise of surprise and protest and hopped off her patio seat to hug him hello. Nick raised his own food clear of her ears.

"Okay, Carrots. Okay. Not even going to let me eat my own lunch first?"

"'Msorry."

He sat opposite her and spoke through a big bite of bug burger.

"So. What's news?"

"Slow," Judy said. "Chief still won't let me leave on patrols."

"It's only been a week."

"I'm not hurt that badly," Judy said. "I can walk."

"With a limp, I'll bet." Nick eyed her. "And you have to be able to run if you need to."

"Whose side are you on?"

He hid his smile behind another bite. "The side where you get better before you get into trouble again."

That was fair, if a little depressing. But then everything Judy did these days seemed to be lackluster compared to what they'd just finished. It wasn't every day the bunny cop and the slick confox uncovered a conspiracy and saved the city. Since then it had all just been paperwork, and careful stretching in the evenings on the doctor's orders. Judy hadn't seen Nick the whole time, and she hadn't blown up so much as a single train since the Bellwether case closed. She was going stir-crazy.

"You should see my desk. Case reports everywhere."

Nick's ears dropped. "Ugh."

"You'd better get used to it, if you're serious about joining up. Did you submit that paperwork yet?"

"The housing app or the specialization survey?"

"That comes later." Judy waved her fork. "You have to actually get accepted to the Academy before they give you a slot at the barracks."

Nick's nose twitched, and he shrugged. "Pretty sure the last form I filled out had ACADEMY HOUSING APPLICATION stamped across the top."

_"Nick."_

He grinned, wide. "You're gonna miss me."

_"Nick!"_

A rabbit made an overenthusiastic scene nearly jumping over the table at Moe's Curbside Cafe, and this time a fox was laughing along with her.

\---

Judy dragged him with her back to her apartment. It was Sunday. She didn't have anything else to do, and she knew despite what had to have been a very recent Academy admission, Nick didn't have any kind of obligations, either. Not like he protested much.

"You _are_ limping."

"Barely." Judy turned to him as they made her landing. "The stairs are good exercise. The doctors say I should be getting some of that. Regular, everyday use. Between that and the elastic stretcher thing I'll be one hundred percent in no time."

Judy unlocked her door and pushed it open. Nick leaned over her shoulder.

"And you give me crap for living under a bridge."

"Don't even." Judy snapped the light on, fighting the grin. "This place is nice."

"At resembling a cell, maybe."

_"You live under a bridge."_

_"See?"_

She gave him her lone chair and sat on the edge of the bed, and demonstrated the band stretches the department therapist had assigned.

"So you just come home and stretch?"

"Most nights. I go for walks, too. Riverwalk Park is right around the corner, and there's the boardwalk one stop over."

"Still." Nick looked around. "No TV, no couches or anything." He looked apologetic. "I think you're a workaholic. You need a hobby."

"Where would I even fit a couch in here?"

"I don't know." Nick held up his fingers like a film director. "On the wall by your bed maybe. Sure, it would take up most of the space, but at least it would be comfy."

Judy had missed the banter more than she expected. Nick was more that a little right, too, in that she'd tried to balance her injury by staying busy. She didn't feel like doing anything else, though. Coming off the high of getting through the Bellwether case with Nick had left her feeling a bit empty.

"And what about you?" she asked. "What have you been doing, other than not telling me you got accepted to the Academy?"

"I wanted to make it a surprise," Nick said. He smiled at her. "Bogo's been hauling me in for interviews ever since I got the news."

"No wonder he's been so grumpy."

"Yes, I'm sure that's it." Nick inspected the desk he was leaning against and held up a little paper packet. "What's this?"

"Hobby," Judy said. "Seeds from home. I've been thinking about starting a little garden. I miss the green."

Nick sniffed at the cucumber seeds. "What, in here?"

"Well, I was thinking about a little box out the window, but I need more room than that for cucumbers or peppers, and the window is also bolted shut. Something about liability."

Nick raised an eyebrow. _"Cell."_

She threw her elastic band at him.

\---

But Nick was intrigued, for reasons Judy couldn't quite explain - and with nothing else on their plates he'd agreed to help out.

They decided on something less lease-breaking but probably more reckless. The stairwell at the end of the fourth floor hallway led to the roof, and right between the exit and the brick wall of the taller rowhome next to Judy's building there was a little concrete patio. Nick looked satisfied.

"I figured there would be something like this up here."

"I would have thought someone else would be using the space by now."

"Maybe they didn't know about it, either," Nick said. "Maybe they're all workaholics like you."

Judy was too busy mentally mapping out the space to take another swipe at him. This could get ambitious.

"For that, you get to carry the dirt up here."

"Sorry, what?"

Yeah, this would work. "My family cobbles together growing trays that can sit out on bare ground or concrete or whatever." She turned to him. "And since you have two functioning knees, you're going to bring the heavy stuff up here."

\---

They wound up with a list. Judy cleared it all with her landlady, just in case, but the armadillo seemed happy to let them experiment with something that might actually raise the property value.

The wooden shipping pallets they fished out of an alley for free, to Nick's amusement, and for the rest they visited Flora & Fauna, the nearest garden supply store. Judy directed Nick to heft around the bags of topsoil they would need, and she collected fertilizer and linings and low trays and a watering can and a set of little paw tools - commercial holdovers she couldn't hide her disdain for. She'd have to replace them with actual quality implements from her own family's machine shop as soon as she could. She picked out some perennials, too, just for some color they wouldn't have to wait to see.

It took them several trips, but eventually all of it was stacked on the roof of her apartment building. Nick was panting. Judy ignored the dull ache from her knee.

"You know you're going to be doing a lot worse at the Academy."

"I'm trying not to think about that part."

"You should learn to love the 5K. I can start dragging you on them on the weekends before you leave, if you want."

"I am diametrically opposed to running, Carrots. And you're not doing any with that leg, either."

Judy grinned at him, showing teeth. "You are going to just _love_ Casset. I can't wait to laugh at you over muzzletime every night."

She had him break down one of the pallets so they could fashion a trellis for climbing plants. While he wrestled with the wood she lined trays and checked their drainage and filled them with soil.

It wasn't much of a garden, but it was a start. By the end of the day, as the sun started to drop, they had two trays full of cucumber and green pepper seeds and primed with wooden frames, with space left over for something small. Judy had put her flowers at the corners.

"Here." She fanned her remaining seed envelopes at Nick. "Pick something tasty."

"Don't suppose you have blueberries."

"You need more room for those. Maybe the next time we expand."

"Oh, is this a project now?" Nick inspected a packet of chili pepper seeds.

"I've given you a hobby now, too. Good choice."

Nick shook the seeds into their waiting furrows and sprinkled the thin covering of soil over them, per Judy's directions. "You'll keep these alive while I'm gone, right?"

"Of course. I'll send you updates every day."

"When's harvest time?"

"A few months, at least. I'll dry the first batch out in my apartment for when you get back."

Nick stood and surveyed their progress. "Everyone else there is going to have pictures of their partners to motivate them, or family. Me, I'll have my plants."

"And me," Judy said. His ears twitched over to her, and the rest of his attention followed. Did she mean that? Yes, she decided. She did. "I mean it when I say I'll call you. Every night."

Nick's face lit up with a smile, and it made Judy warm. "You're going to get sick of me."

"Somehow I doubt that."

\---

They washed up in her little bathroom, scrubbing the soft soil off their paws. Judy sat on her bed again to do her exercises. The day's crouching had left her sore, and she worried it showed. Nick looked on with what she was starting to think was concern.

"How long?"

"A couple weeks. Pending Bogo's approval."

Nick winced. "Sorry."

"I'm keeping busy. He's happy with that."

"We'll trade status updates, then." Nick rubbed his muzzle. "I'm supposed to leave in three days. I don't know how much time I'll have between now and then."

That soon. Judy looked over at him, sitting on her chair, in the same clothes she'd last seen him in. Same tie and everything. "What about until then? You're not still living under the bridge, are you?"

"No." That alarm, Nick had definitely picked up on. He held out a placatory paw. "Bogo let me borrow a cot. Down in one of the break rooms. It's not much, but it's working."

"You could stay here." On the floor, sure, but at least he'd have someone to talk to. A friend.

"I'll be fine, Carrots. It's just a couple days. But that's where I should get back to before it gets too late."

Judy decided not to push it. She slipped off the bed.

"If you change your mind, or if you have time before you go, just say so."

Judy hadn't had occasion to hug him since that fateful meeting under the bridge last week. And this afternoon at lunch, technically. But this one was slower. More controlled.

Better, probably, she thought as his arms settled around her shoulders. She smelled topsoil and fox.

And Judy didn't look down, but she could have sworn she felt a fluffy tail curling its way around her ankles before Nick was gone, padding down her hallway.

It was dangerous to wonder when she'd get to feel that again. She knew that, and she thought it anyway, long into night, until her phone's message notification pulled her back out of a doze.

_Goodnight, Carrots. Don't forget to tuck in my peppers._


	18. You Show me Yours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You trust me?" she breathed.
> 
> "That look in your eyes says I should maybe think more about my answer than usual," Nick said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a prompt by [AsekaSilver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsekaSilver/pseuds/AsekaSilver)

Nick almost didn't notice at first, which was surprising, given the complete absence of subtlety Judy Hopps usually employed.

Okay, that wasn't fair. She could get a lot of things past a lot of mammals, but when it came to all the little cues of nonverbal communication, Nick had even more experience.

And it still took him a while to catch on to how much time she spent watching him. Sometimes she would let him take the lead during parking duty, or fall a step or two behind on foot patrol, or would stand just a little too close behind him in lines.

Nick fancied himself somewhere closer to attractive than anonymous, yes, but this felt somehow different. In all those years of hustling and cons he'd typically kept the mark's focus on his expression, or on his animated paws.

No one had spent quite this much time staring at his tail.

\---

Not that he was in any position to judge. He'd spent more time than was proper for a fox to watch a bunny like that, too. And he liked the attention, if he was honest. They had started down this - whatever it was, this _really close friends_ path - early on. Nick couldn't tell exactly when. It felt like natural progression. Enjoyable. Mutual. Authentic. More than a little bit intimate.

And so Nick let his tail develop that mind of its own. It brushed her legs more often in line, and swayed where she could see in the mornings before they left the apartments they wound up sharing, and found its way into her lap on occasion when they watched movies or traffic or the night sky.

She would rest her paws on him. Pull him a little bit closer, or splay her fingers so the bushy fur would comb through them. That one he was pretty sure she did intentionally; whenever he caught her eye she would twitch and cut it out.

This time it was while they sat on his couch in her apartment on a Thursday night, eating the last of the old takeout and watching their favorite almost-over-the-top superhero movie on his phone, propped on his knees.

And it might have been totally innocent when it started. Judy had scooted closer to get a better angle while he slurped noodles, and then she'd stayed there, effectively pinning his tail behind her in the groove between the cushions.

She looked down and seemed surprised to see it on her left side, half of its length curling into her lap. She reached for him, and Nick let her start whatever absent brushing she had in mind. Eventually she would notice he'd stopped bothering with his food.

There it was. Even looking sideways her Nick could see her ears redden.

"Sorry."

"What for? You're very gentle. It feels good."

"It's a bit- forward."

"Touchy-feely."

Her flush got worse. "Right."

Nick shrugged and leaned back, closing his eyes. "I don't mind touchy-feely. Wouldn't go fishing for bunnies if I did." He wiggled his tailtip.

There was a moment of silence and stillness from beside him, and then Nick smiled as he felt warm paws stroking his fur.

"You're so soft. Do you brush it?"

"Once in a while." He probably should have after work tonight, if he'd known it was going to be such a popular attraction again.

And especially if he'd known Judy was going to lean forward and bury her muzzle against it. Nick froze and opened his eyes. Her breath went out.

She saw his reaction, and he swore he could feel the heat coming off her ears from here, but she wasn't stopping this time. She pushed her cheek against his tail and gathered more of it into her lap.

And she didn't protest when Nick slipped the paw around her shoulders and pulled her closer, to lean against his chest. One of her ears draped over his shoulder.

They watched the whole rest of the film that way, and Nick barely remembered any of it.

\---

The next day, Judy stood ahead of him in the brief line as they filed out of the bullpen. She led their assigned sweeps, with little but an ear turned back toward him to betray her attention. It lasted all through their shift and even later, as they waited at the cash register at the local market with shrink-wrapped subs for an informal dinner. It was like she was reluctant to look him in the eye, to look at him at all. Every time he tried, she would find something else to hold her attention and her tail would twitch.

He was close to saying something about it, when they stepped off the trolley at Riverwalk Park. Last night had been a bit unprecedented, sure, in that breathless way that trying new things with Judy had always been to him. But he'd left for the night because he had to, because he hadn't packed any of the overnight gear he would have needed for a stay on his couch. Judy had smiled at his tail wrapping around her legs one last time as he hugged her goodbye.

Now, she'd avoided so much as glancing at it all day. Had she cooled down overnight? Nick hadn't expected it to scare her off. He didn't want it to.

And even now she was leading the way to their favorite bench, up out of the park's natural amphitheater toward where the water rushed faster through the trees. The path was steeper. Judy had to raise her knees higher and, yes, make the occasional hop - to climb it. Her tail bounced.

Nick knew he shouldn't enjoy the view as much as he did. But it kept drawing his attention, and there was no one else to notice. Turnabout was fair play, he reasoned. If he let her snuggle his like a body pillow, she ought to let him get away with a peek or two. Okay, a long peek or two.

They sat on the stone bench to eat. Nick, on impulse, swept his tail around to curl behind her again, and Judy nearly jumped out of her fur.

"I thought so."

Judy took a huge bite of sandwich, practically radiating anticipation and powerful curiosity. "That's not fair."

Nick just wriggled his tail closer. "Eat up, Carrots."

\---

His apartment was more convenient that night, in that it was closer and they'd spend less time in public getting back there than they would going to Judy's. That seemed important now.

She turned to him as soon as he locked the door shut behind them. her eyes were huge.

"Do you ever wag your tail?"

There was a touch of sizzling awareness going in Nick's ears now. He smiled at her insistent look. "At least you bought me dinner first."

She curled the toes of one foot over her other. "Well?"

"When I'm happy or excited, sure." He swished his tail, to demonstrate. She was mesmerized - and so was he. "Or when I realize, say, Officer Hopps can't get it out of her head."

Her ears twitched, and she met his eyes with what appeared to be some effort. "Guilty," she muttered.

Nick led the way over to the windows on the far wall - and yes, she definitely was happy to follow now. The sun was on its way down, and the lights of the city were starting to come up. He caught her eye in the glass as she jumped up to stand on the long blue cushion of her futon and widened his sweep.

"Nick, is this-" Her ears dropped, but her eyes stayed glued to the motion of his tail. "Is this _okay_? I mean, yes, I do- I like it, a _lot_ , but are you comfortable with it?"

Nick turned and held a light pad to her nose, and she went cross-eyed. "It's okay, Carrots. I like it, and I _love_ that you like it."

She relaxed - and somehow keyed even further up at the same time.

"That said, I notice you've never returned the favor."

Wide, _wide_ eyes. Nick couldn't even see her tail and he knew it was twitching up a storm. When had she gotten closer?

She tilted her head. "You showed me yours, huh?"

"Seems only fair," Nick said. "And you did repay part of it today."

Judy flushed again, hot and staticky and scented of cedar, now that she was this close. Nick had room to loop his tail around her waist again, and this time she caught it up as it came around.

"That was me trying not to stare," she said.

"Full disclosure," he said. "I was staring."

She ran her paws over his tailtip. "Just staring?"

Nick wanted to _explore_ , is what he wanted. But he knew they had to take this a step at a time, regardless of what the pheromones said.

He put a paw on her shoulder and another on her hip, low. Judy leaned against him and smiled up and him and kept stroking his fur, and he moved careful fingers down, slow, until they encountered the softest, downiest thing he thought he'd ever touched. Judy's fingers tightened on his own tail.

"Okay?"

"Mm." She tapped her muzzle against his chest. Her tail wiggled in his paw. "You're very gentle, too."

So soft. So warm. So very _proximate_ to the taut curve of her jeans. There was no getting around that, but then they both knew it. Nick kept his paws careful. It was hard, especially with the little noise she was making in the back of her throat.

"You trust me?" she breathed.

"That look in your eyes says I should maybe think more about my answer than usual," Nick said.

Her laugh was an exhalation against the top of his snout. "Slow. We're taking this slow."

So soft. So warm. All of her, not just her tail. "I do trust you."

Judy pulled, ever so gently, on his own tail. Her paws guided him around and tugged on his shirt. "Lose this."

Well, it wasn't like they hadn't done that before. Nick unbuttoned the gray shirt and pulled it back off his shoulders. Judy stood behind him on the couch, where his tail had somehow worked its way between her ankles. It was coming up short as he sent it left and right.

Then there was a tug at his waistband and a pop as Judy opened the snap closure above the tail vent. Nick rotated his ears.

"Relax," she hummed, and Nick shivered as light fingers slid down the small of his back, against the muscles on either side of his spine. She rested her forehead between his shoulder blades. "I've just always wanted to see this."

For a minute or two the only noise was the swish of his fur on the couch cushion. Every time his tail met her legs, Nick would wrap it around them as much as he could. Judy had one paw around his front, in the fur of his stomach. The other rested, ever so gently, against his lumbar.

"That academy stint was good to you," she purred.

Nick turned his head so he could see her out of the corner of his eye. "That implies you had some basis for comparison before I left."

"Educated guesswork," Judy said. Then: "And yes, I snuck a few looks."

Their relationship was evolving as they stood there. They exercised together. Slept in the same room, in various states of undress. Snuggled on their couches or beds, late into the night. _Snuck looks_. But Nick had never stood there and wagged his tail for her, just to show off the motion. She'd never twitched her own tail against his paws in encouragement.

Then a set of tiny little rabbit claws scritched against his tailbase, right where it met his back, and Nick felt his hips surge in an involuntary, unmistakable rhythm.

_"Whoa, Carrots-"_

Judy gasped and let him go. Nick felt his tail bristle. That was a new one.

She was staring when he turned to face her, her paws clapped to her mouth. "Oh."

"No it's-" He looked down at himself and had to laugh. Evolving was right. "I didn't know that was coming, either."

"Really?"

"Really." How could he? No one else had ever had him so vulnerable. He reached for her paws, and ducked his muzzle to look her in the eye. "It's all right, I promise. Apparently I really liked that. It's just... more than we should probably get into tonight, if you meant what you said about slow."

"Nick." Her eyes dilated. "I did. But are you sure about this? All of it."

Nick wondered if he'd ever work up the guts to kiss this earnest little bunny, the way she deserved, the way he so wanted to. It would be the perfect response. But she looked down, as his tail - this time of its own volition - curled around her again, and the moment was gone. She slipped her paws into the bushy fur.

He pulled her closer, with his tail and with his paws, and ventured one down to return the favor.

It would take more time, it seemed. But that was okay. They had plenty new to get used to now, before they took that next big step.

"I am," he said. "We'll get there."


	19. Cautionary Information [Civil Enforcement Command AU]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is based on a [fascinating report from Sandia National Laboratories](http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%20message%20to%2012,000%20a_d.htm) on how to keep intelligences from disturbing nuclear waste disposal sites in the far future, when we humans are all presumably dead and gone. Some of the concept art made for really visually interesting settings and it wouldn’t leave me alone.
> 
> So I wrote a surrealist nightmare sequence because it was Halloween and this made for a spooky, ominous setting.

_Syrtis Major Planum_   
_Mars_

 

It was, bar none, the strangest place Judy had ever been. Even the wind sounded different against her helmet in here.

The sharp patterns had first drawn her eye from above, as they passed over the exclusion site on landing approach. It was a square kilometer, bounded on all sides by jagged, radiating limbs that were carved out of Mars' native stone and dirt.

And inside the field was a tangled forest of huge ceramic thorns, twenty meters tall, cold under her gloves when she got up close.

It was like post-modern art, except it was too visceral. Too unsettling. The architecture itself was supposed to scare mammals away before they even got close enough to hear the recorded messages, or read the inscriptions in the plinths at the center. They all shared the same message, in a way that made it through no matter the capacity for language: _Don't dig here. Don't stick around. There's nothing for you below this ground but death._

Nuclear tritium was an ideal fuel - lightweight, easy to secure, high power densities - but the radiation it gave off could kill, and far faster than the background radiation or oxidizing winds here on the surface. These days they dropped it in the sun, but these disposal fields still dotted the solar system, markers of a time before mammals mastered the regular climb out of gravity wells. Reminders of the dangerous power they'd harnessed during the first generation of interplanetary exploration.

Warnings.

Things still went wrong, Judy knew as she wandered through the thorns and listened to the wind. Accidents and leaks and aggression still caused nuclear incidents. Mammals still died. She and Nick and the rest of Civil Enforcement had done their fair share of cleanup, and after every event Judy couldn't help but worry a little more than usual about the reactors that powered their spaceships and habitats.

Some of it was warranted. With mammals of all different sizes, there was a sweet spot for space travel, a balance between weight and hardiness and manipulation ability and safety. Judy was on the low end of the government flight range. Any smaller and she risked being unable to perform in an emergency. Micrometeoroids and debris were more threatening. It took less radiation to be dangerous.

Nick hadn't wanted to come here at first, because he was worried it would be distressing. And he wasn't exactly wrong. That was what the place was designed to to. She'd had to explain this wasn't exposure therapy, that she wasn't going to change her mind halfway there, or freak out when they arrived. On-balance, she knew there was no risk here. It was just something interesting to explore.

That didn't stop her from keeping an ear on her helmet's radiation sensors, just in case.

Nick was elsewhere in the maze of dark shapes, it seemed. Last she'd seen him, he'd been reading from one of the warning markers, the one that depicted a generalized mammal in obvious distress. This place spooked him, too, she thought. He'd been checking in regularly.

"Have you found the center?" She asked over their shared channel.

"Not yet. This place is like a maze."

"I wonder if that's on purpose?"

She was close, according to her GPS link. There was supposed to be another set of information markers nearby, set in stone walls to protect from the meager Martian wind that was rushing against her helmet. She consulted the HUD directions and went left.

_Blip._

Her ears, folded flat down her back to fit her helmet, twitched anyway. There wasn't supposed to be a significant radiation risk on the surface. It was a kilometer beneath her feet, sealed in a concrete shield.

She cycled the sensor-

And it jumped again. 0.02 millisieverts and climbing.

_Blip._

She swallowed. "Nick, I'm getting radiation alerts."

Nothing.

"Nick?"

She turned in place, and the foreboding really started to go to work on her. The black spears everywhere, representing pain and injury, inhospitable ground - the looming forms of the berms at the edge of the complex, blocking the horizon, cutting her off-

_Blip._

Judy needed out.

She started retracing her steps. Her voice shook in her helmet. "Nick, I'm getting clear. Can you meet me at the edge?"

Nothing but the noise of the radiation detector, and her own breathing.

"Nick, _where are you?_ " If he could hear her, he'd be responding. He'd never let her get this bad. He'd always been there to stop it.

But right now, it seemed, she was on her own, to progress with a series of long leaps in the light gravity that her instructors always advised against in an emergency but she though were plenty warranted right now. She was ignoring the maze and moving in a straight line through the enormous thorns, aiming for the nearest artificial bluff at the edge, listening to that counter get more and more strident in her ear.

Three hundredths. Four.

_Why had they split up in the first place?_

She would have to climb the berm, to look back into the maze and see if she could spot Nick. He would be escaping, too, if he could. She trusted him to follow the same training, to disengage and regroup when it was safe to do so.

But that radiation sensor. Now it was splashing alerts on her visor, to evacuate the area. There was a permanent damage threshold coming up, and it had a location on the source now, behind her. Judy turned to look-

Nothing. Utter stillness.

And then a new spike erupted from the ground near the center of the maze, stabbing a fresh tear in the horizon, twenty meters in a tenth of a second. Even in Mars' tenuous atmosphere the noise of splintering rock was like thunder, enough to wash out the keening of the rad alarm.

But she could still see the awful new presence in front of her, and the sight made her fur prickle, and her sinus hurt. Was her vision tunneling?

Five hundred millisieverts. Two Sieverts. Six-

_"Judy!"_

\---

Judy woke bolt upright in the dark, in the act of propelling herself backward so quickly her shoulders and head slammed against the wall of her quarters. She cried out.

There were paws against her cheek and throat.

" _Judy!_ You're okay. I'm right here. Listen to me."

_"Nick-"_

He reached up beside them and slapped on the lights. They came up to show her tiny one-room apartment, dug into the rock at Ceres.

Judy was panting.

"You're okay."

She clutched at his arms. "I couldn't find you."

Nick pulled her closer in the bed, got his arms around her properly. She could feel his careful fingers probing for damage.

"I'm right here. It's okay, sweetheart."

"You didn't answer, and there was a new one, and it was too much."

"A new one."

"A new spike. At the exclusion zone." Judy swallowed. "At Mars. It came out of the ground."

_Oh,_ his arms said. He was solid and warm. "It doesn't work that way."

"I know."

Nick seemed to be trying to reassure her anyway. "Do you want some water?"

She nodded. "Thank you."

He left her, reluctantly, to get it. Judy hugged her knees to her chest.

The sites were precautions, she reminded herself. They weren't memorials, or counters. They didn't animate. Everyday space travel was more dangerous, from a pure dosage standpoint. The one they'd visited was 180 million kilometers away right now. They were safe.

But Judy couldn't help but think about it. Power had to come from somewhere. The lights, and the air systems and the gravity - they all ran on Ceres' nuclear reactors. It didn't matter that the newer fusion models generated less long-lasting waste than fission methods. She was smaller than most spacefaring mammals. It didn't take as much to be dangerous for her.

She took the glass and drank. It was chemically perfect and utterly tasteless.

Nick slipped back into the bed and resumed his post at her side.

"Is there one here? An exclusion zone?"

His ears dropped. "Don't do that to yourself, Carrots."

"I can't help it." She winced. "I don't think I'm going to sleep again tonight."

"Then we will face the rigors of artificial sunrise together," he said, and took the empty glass to set it on the bedside table. He came back with her tablet, which he used to summon light classical music from her quarters' speakers. They left the lights on. "Maybe we can get Bogo to give us berthing enforcement. Nice and easy."

Of course he was going to try to distract her, and sacrifice his own comfort and health to look after hers. She couldn't talk him out of that, any more than he'd be able to talk her out of dwelling on the dangers of living in space, or letting her imagination run away from her.

So be it. Judy settled down as best she could in Nick's arms, and tried to tune out the hum and whir of the nuclear-powered habitat under their paws.


	20. The Little Things

It wasn't enough that their work took longer than usual, or that they got flak for it from Snarlof, whose financial discovery paperwork apparently didn't have any flex built into its timetable. No, they had to leave headquarters so late that nearly all the restaurants were closed, too.

Now Nick was sitting in Judy's apartment, eating canned soup over rice instead of the the pizza they'd planned. There was nothing wrong with canned soup over rice. There was nothing whatsoever wrong with her company. But he still felt robbed of something.

Judy was leaning against him, with her little spoon upside-down in her mouth. He dropped an arm around her waist and snugged her closer.

"What?" she mumbled around the utensil.

"Just taking what I can get," Nick said.

"That's the spirit." She looked up at him and increased their contact. "You want to talk about it?"

"It's nothing useful," Nick said. "Just venting."

"Venting is too useful." She stabbed her spoon back in her bowl. "I bet I can guess what it is, too."

"Snarlof knew what he was getting into asking us for records work. The physical stuff takes time."

Judy nodded. "And we didn't have help."

The records team was out cataloging a bunch of new intake, so they'd been left to deal with the precinct's stacks themselves. Some of the financial paperwork was still on physical media, four and five shelves up, in folders so large they were unwieldy. Even with a ladder, Judy had her work cut out for her getting them in and out of place.

She always did it, too. Never asked for help or even showed that she needed it, except to him. Sometimes that was her being thickheaded, and he could get her to see sense. But sometimes he really did wish she didn't have to work so hard to do things some mammals took for granted, or stand by afterward while they took her for granted.

"He could at least be grateful." Nick took another bite. "Owes us pizza, as far as I'm concerned. You were climbing the shelves."

"We'll collect the next time we pick up a suspect he loses," Judy soothed. "For what it's worth, I think our night is still going better than his."

"Fair."

Judy made her bowl safe on the floor in front of the couch and stood next to him. "Scootch up. I'll get your neck."

She was just tall enough to stand behind him on the couch and work her paws into sore neck muscles. Nick bowed his head and savored her tiny claws.

It was a dumb thing to hang up on, he knew. ZPD's officer corps hadn't always had to accommodate smaller mammals, and there were bound to be rough spots while everyone's horizons broadened, while everyone's average eyeline shifted a bit lower.

And for all they had to deal with, there was a lot of progress already. Lots of the doors were getting reworked for smaller scales, from the revolving one out front to the ones to the breakroom. He didn't have to stretch for them anymore. Judy didn't have to jump. There was a new set of small- and mid-scale free weights in the rec room. Even Bogo was supposed to be getting an appropriately sized chair in his office, whenever the facilities team took delivery of the one inclusion reps from City Hall said had to match his decor. Something about a coherent public image.

Judy didn't much like those two bureaucrats, who in as literal a case of embodying their mission as possible were a vole and a giraffe, respectively. They liked to hover and take unnecessarily political care to make sure ZPD's two smallest officers were integrating well into the workforce. Judy was fond of saying she spent more time dodging them than interacting with them.

They didn't like when Judy and Nick took risky calls. Nick didn't, either. Lots of cars were dangerous when you were fox-sized or smaller. The occasional guns, even more so. Tangling with troublemakers sometimes required a call for backup that a larger officer wouldn't have had to make. Sometimes unfamiliar foxes tackled Judy, and sometimes she tried to tackle unfamiliar rhinos. But the risk was as much a part of the job as anything else. They had to buckle down and deal with it. Minimize it when they could. Trust each other not to get in over their heads. And they were getting good at that.

Judy's chin appeared in the corner of his eye, over his right shoulder.

"Better?"

"Much." Nick tipped his head so his muzzle fit against her throat. "My turn."

She stepped back around him and he sank back against the cushions. Tonight might be a night on the couch, now that he thought about it. Neither of them would object. Neither of them seemed all that interested in moving.

Judy stuck her muzzle against his collarbone and stayed there. He brought his paws up to rub her stiff shoulders and felt her hot breath go out at the pressure. Her ears flopped over his fingers.

"You need some painkillers, Carrots?"

"I'm okay."

"You shouldn't have to go around craning up at everything. Those folders were bigger than you."

"Were not."

"You were at an increased risk of paper cuts, then."

"Was not."

"Give me _something_ ," Nick muttered against the top of her head. "I'm trying to be indignant for you here."

"Mm." She looked up at him and shifted so she would be more comfortable. "I love you."

And _oh,_ how he loved her, too. All two feet six inches of her. She barely came up to his nose, even when he dipped it to meet her.

Every task and obstacle and literal tall order their work put in front of them, she was ready to tackle, because her spirit was as big as the rest of them put together. It was so challenging - so fulfilling - to keep up with her, and to know she looked out for him at the end of the day the same way he did her.

They didn't need to dwell on it. Days ran late sometimes. It wouldn't be the last time they had to lift heavy loads, or move a bunch of oversize files. They would keep making time like this, to commiserate and recover and get some perspective, on a couch that was larger than either of them needed, in an apartment that was too small for even a rabbit.

And it would keep working, because even after all of that there was one thing that never needed to be smaller, or bigger. When she was close to him like this, she fit under his chin like a puzzle piece.

That didn't need changing at all.


	21. Broken Heater

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something fast and comfy. It's getting cold out in the mornings again.

Judy never set her alarm on the weekends, out of consideration for Nick's tendency to sleep in when he could.

But she still woke up at about the same time every morning - and now that they were into the depths of winter that meant she was getting up before the sun.

And she was out of bed and upright before the air of her apartment snatched the warmth away from her exposed fur. The floorboards were like ice under her paws.

"Nick!"

"Mm."

"Nick, it's _freezing_ in here! What happened?"

The pile of thick blankets on her bed shifted enough for a red muzzle to poke out. "This is what you get for leaving bed."

Judy turned to check the window, which was as securely closed as it had been the night before, and misting a bit from the breath of two mammals. She tapped a paw to the oil heater - touched it again - and held her fingers against it. It was stone cold.

"Oh no."

"You get whatever that is, too."

"No, the heater's broken, I think."

Nick raised his head far enough to blink at the defunct pipes. "It's not just turned off?"

"I set it last night." Judy checked the little knob. "It's on 'four,' whatever that is."

It would need a visit from the building's maintenance beaver. Judy had turned it on for the first night of the season before they'd gone to bed last night, since it was finally cold enough outside to warrant the climate control. It had gurgled a bit then, too, now that she thought about it.

She groped for her phone on the desk - that was cold in her paws, too - and tapped out a reminder. "Do you want some coffee?"

"Why not?" Nick had vanished back under the covers. "It's the weekend, though. We don't have anywhere to be at dark o'clock."

"The sun's on its way up," Judy told him. She turned on the little electric kettle and scraped in the tin for coffee grounds. Her sister Margaret had knitted her a little cozy for her coffee press, but Judy wasn't sure that was going to keep Nick's portion warm until he was ready to drink it.

There wasn't anywhere to be, actually. Judy was running on force of habit right now, doubly so since she was decaffeinated. The kettle would take a while to finish its work, and while she waited for it to start hissing, she could hear the chill breeze rattling at the window.

She pulled the baggy sleep shirt tighter and moved over so she could see the street. There was just the one pair of headlights moving out there right now. All the chimneys Judy could see from here were billowing steam.

Two minutes left on the water, and the cold floor was making her shift from foot to foot. She climbed back onto the bed and pulled at the sheets Nick had wrapped around himself again.

"You can't fix it?" he mumbled.

"The heater? Not until I can talk to Mrs. Reagan about maintenance." Judy snuggled closer. "And she's out on weekends. I'm going to have to deal."

She had a fox for that, though, with a thick, warm winter coat. It wasn't all bad.

Nick was still half-asleep, though, and jumped at her touch. "Carrots-"

"Warm me up." She stuck her paws against the ruff of fur at his neck.

"You did this to yourself," he grumbled. But he was reaching over to snug the blankets tighter around her and pull her back under his chin. Judy felt his tail curling up behind her in their little nest, against her back, where it warmed the tips of her ears. "You should move. Get an actual modern up-to-code apartment."

"It's just cold, fox." Judy nuzzled his throat. "And I like this place, even then. You do, too."

"Get a space heater, then."

"You do a pretty good impression," she said. "Or we could go to your place."

"That, too." He was drifting off again.

That, too. Or they could do this. Nick was right: they didn't have to be anywhere to be. They could stay right here, and keep each other warm, and wait for the sun. Not even the coffee would get them out of bed immediately. The kettle had finished its work and switched over to a timer. It would stay hot and ready for another two hours.


	22. Private Box

William Moulds was between Nick and his evening.

Nick was trying not to hold it against him. Moulds was dead, after all, and didn't have much say in the paperwork he generated. But Nick hadn't expected the various legal wrinkles in Moulds' will when he'd volunteered them for this case.

"Did you send that contact request?" he asked.

"Yeah, it's ready. Someone from outreach will make the actual meeting happen." Judy swiveled her chair. "And I left a message with the lawyer's office for Monday."

"Think that's done then?"

"Or as close as we're going to get it for the weekend."

Nick winced. "Sorry, Carrots."

"We didn't know." Her ears were still up - it took a lot more than an extra hour of tedious kin-tracing to ding her enthusiasm - but Nick was taking it personally anyway. "It's out of our paws for now."

"Soon enough, I hope." Nick turned in his own chair to clock out before he opened a new browser window. The IT department was specific about personal use of the network that way. He navigated to the municipal events calendar on the city website.

They'd been planning this all week. They'd done dinner two weeks ago, and if they went to a movie Nick was just going to get distracted by his partner there in the dark. This weekend, they'd decided on something different. This weekend, Pallas Rorgryn was conducting the Grand Philharmonic through his own Third and Fourth Symphonies, in one of the last outdoor concerts of the season.

And even the cheap lawn seats were sold out already. Nick stared in disbelief. The pool had opened less than ten minutes ago. Were these concerts really that popular? Nobody else around here but Judy seemed to listen to classical music, and that was because he'd turned her onto it.

"How close can we get?" her voice came from beside him.

Nick refreshed the page, just in case, but the red box remained. "I don't know if we even can."

That did make her ears droop, just a bit. "Already?"

_"Mezzanine/lawn seats are raffled on a first-come, first-serve basis,"_ Nick read from the fine print. _"'Piano in the Park' donors will receive special priority for raffle tickets."_

Judy chewed her lip. "No technical purchase necessary, in other words."

"So much for trying out high society." Nick eyed her and lowered his voice. "I'm sorry, sweetheart."

"We didn't know," she said again, this time for entirely different reasons. "It's all right."

\---

They changed out of their uniforms and went in person, just in case, but the box office turned them away. Nick could see through the wrought gates to the tiered lawn of the amphitheater, and sure enough it was at capacity - full of mostly old mammals. He guessed he shouldn't have been surprised.

Judy was smiling up at him. "It was worth a shot."

"Yeah, but it's an open-air venue." Nick had to resist the urge to reach for her out here. He looked around the flagstone path that traced the periphery of the little park. "Let's go around and see if we can find some place to listen in."

There was indeed a little park on one side, already heavily populated by families and pairs of mammals who had obviously had the same idea. Too many eyes and distractions. The other side was a fenced-off construction zone, replete with scaffolding and cans of sealant where someone was repairing brickwork. Nick's ears twitched as he caught the unmistakable disonnance of an orchestra tuning. Damn.

Judy pulled on his paw this time. "Don't stress it."

This time he felt stressing it was warranted, because they might have made it if he hadn't signed them up for more work. Now it felt like the evening they'd planned was slipping out of his paws.

"I want nice things for you." He shrugged. "And then work doesn't cooperate."

There was a a smattering of applause, and the opening chords of Rorgryn's Third. He watched Judy's ears swivel to catch it, and then she was pulling down on the front of his shirt so he bent close to her. Her kiss was short and fierce.

"This is what you get for being responsible," she said, and watched him with this warmth in her expression that Nick had first started to notice when he'd been at the police academy, sharing video calls with Judy late into the night. "It's the pits, right?"

She wasn't hung up on it, and she didn't want him to be, either. Nick squeezed her shoulders and nodded.

"Let's get some ice cream," she said.

Nick followed her gaze, to the little cart and its otter attendant on the other side of the street.

\---

She got pistachio in a cone, with a little plastic spoon. He got red on a stick, like he always did. It tasted like strawberry. They walked up and down the path and listened to the faint music.

They were outside the venue, so techically they didn't have to keep quiet, but Judy kept her voice just loud enough to reach him anyway. It's nice."

"Have you heard this one before?"

"A couple times. Not often enough to know what to expect." Judy tilted her head. "I like the horns."

This symphony sounded different live. It was absent some of the detail Nick expected from his recordings, but there was an immediate weight to the sound that made it new and interesting to listen to. "He leans on them a lot. Too much, according to some."

He could see her listening hard. "When did you start listening to this?"

"To Rorgryn?"

"To any of it."

Nick licked his popsicle. "I found some of his online. A lot of it's free, actually. And I came here once as a kit, before they redid the place."

"I'm surprised this part of town hasn't changed that much," Judy said. She turned her spoon upside down in her mouth and looked around. "The file said it used to be all old housing."

The amphitheater hadn't been nearly as nice when he'd visited on that school trip so long ago. The surrounding buildings had been mostly tenements; now most of them were smaller. Newer. Condos, probably. Gentrification got everywhere.

At least one of the old ones was still standing, though, right across the street. Nick tilted his head up at it. In fact-

"Idea." He stood. Maybe they'd be able to salvage this after all. "Follow me."

It was the same building. From this angle, it all came rushing back - the rickety drainpipe on the corner of the stucco, the long summer nights looking out at the lights of the city from the rooftop. The same rooftop. Nick turned to Judy.

"Want the best seat in the house?"

She raised an eyebrow spoke around the spoon between her teeth. "Inside?"

"Up top." Nick nudged the drainpipe.

He ears dropped in alarm. "You're not climbing three stories up a gutter."

"Of course not," he snorted. " _We_ are."

"No, as in I won't let you." Judy stuck her spoon back in her ice cream and grabbed his elbow. "That would be too hard to explain to Bogo if something went wrong, if nothing else. Also, that's trespassing."

She wasn't wrong. But the pull of nostalgia was a powerful one. He still wanted to make this work.

"Do you trust me?"

Judy gritted her teeth. "That's not fair."

"I'll explain when we get up there." Nick hid his smile and pointed to a rusting fire escape. "We'll use that; it looks marginally safer."

He climbed behind her. The ladders rattled and creaked, but they seemed solid enough. When they made the sloping, tiled roof he paused to give her a paw and help her to her feet. Over the crest of the roof, they had a direct line of sight over the back wall of the amphitheater, down into the orchestra pit. Rorgryn's drums rolled over them - a little distant, a little modulated for the weird bounces they took to get up here - but listenable all the same. Judy's ears perked.

He led her over to the lee of a window frame that jutted out over the main slope, where they could sit and get some shelter from the breeze.

"I used to come up to this roof some nights as a kit," Nick said. "When mom had to work late at the diner."

"Huh." Judy looked over at him. "Did she know?"

There was something about being alone at home that had always been a bit uncomfortable for him, ever since his father had left. But his mother had never asked him exactly where he went when he left the house some nights.

"Maybe. She knew I was staying out of trouble. That was most important."

This rooftop had always felt safe and secure, despite the three-story drop. Back then, he'd scaled the drainpipe to watch the city lights as the sun went down. He'd slept up here sometimes in fair weather, trusting the raised lip at the edge of the roof to catch him if he rolled too far one way.

Even - or maybe especially - after his mother had died, the escape had remained important. No, it wasn't legal, strictly speaking. But Nick figured it beat the trouble he could get in to as he got his first real taste of living alone in a big, occasionally-less-than-friendly city. No one had ever bothered him up here.

"Good way to listen in on free concerts," Judy said. Her ears focused the sound.

"I didn't get to hear many." Nick pulled the last of his popsicle off the stick with his teeth. "Most of the time the stage was locked up. I don't think acts liked coming down here until they rebuilt."

And now it was the Grand Phil. There was a little something to be said for the restoration committee's efforts. Nick sat back against the roof and let Judy lean against him, and they listened. The first movement wrapped, and the next started with a judder of tense strings. Rorgryn liked to interrupt them with dissonance. Nick liked to watch Judy react.

If he was honest, the music was secondary, now that he'd finally found a place for them to sit and enjoy it. Being up here gave them even more privacy than he'd anticipated. It was nice to just indulge in her company as Judy discovered something new. Her ears did a lot of talking, for something that picked up sound. Nick tried to keep his nuzzling to a minimum, so she could take in the music.

She noticed, of course, and left off watching the perfect sync of the violinists to try to return the attention a couple of times. Nick held off, and gave her his popsicle stick instead. She liked nibbling on them.

And when movement II finished, she squirmed in his lap to look up and plant a kiss underneath his chin.

"Worth it, I take it?"

"I'm off duty," she said. Her breath warmed his throat. "So I'll let this flagrant violation of property law slide, this once."

"Thank you, officer."

"I think we might-"

The window beside them slid open on a squeaky track. Nick jumped, and felt Judy react against him, too. The popsicle stick clattered away down the clay shingles.

A wizened old elephant stuck her head out the window to glare, with a broomstick wrapped in her trunk. Nick froze. This was about the worst scenario they could have wandered into. Two cops who absolutely knew better - and who were pretty clearly together to boot.

"And what do you think you're doing?"

He could let Judy answer, but she tended to give straight, honest ones. Nick had the edge when it came to sweet-talking mammals, but that was also never any guarantee. This lady wasn't one he would have tried it on to begin with.

And he was a predator. Outnumbered, and acting awful guilty. His mouth was dry.

"Ah. Taking in a show," he said, and gestured over Judy's shoulder, right as the low brass swelled.

"From private property?" The elephant raised her stick. "That's illegal, not to mention dangerous. I ought to call the police."

Nick's insides twisted. He should have left it alone after all. They should have taken their ice cream and gone to a different park. Now Judy was going to get hauled up on disciplinary. He was going to get more disciplinary.

And then Judy made it worse.

"If you do," she said, and reached to her belt where her badge was clipped, "Tell them my name is Judy Hopps. I work for ZPD. They'll want my badge number. It's-"

"The police bunny?" She frowned.

"Yes, Ma'am."

She was flatfooted. The stick wavered. "I recognize you from the posters. I take it your boss doesn't know you're up here."

"No, Ma'am." Judy swallowed. She wanted to look at him, Nick could see. Her ears were rotating toward him. "I'm off duty, on personal time. You're right: this is misdemeanor trespassing."

She huffed and pointed the stick at Nick. "And I suppose you're her partner."

Nick hadn't risked moving. Now he reached up to fish his own badge out of his shirt, on the chain around his neck. "That's right."

The elephant was squinting at him. "Stand up."

Judy scrambled far enough free for Nick to get his feet under him.

"You." She pulled her broomstick back inside and relaxed her trunk. "I thought you looked familiar. You used to sell pawpsicles down on Sunrise Stretch in the afternoons."

It had been years now, and try as he might, Nick couldn't remember ever selling one to a female elephant. But she remembered him from somewhere. "I did."

"And now you're a cop." The last of the hostility drained out of her. Instead of meanacing them with a broom, now she was nearly smiling. "Well. My ears."

Now Judy did look between them, as if she couldn't believe how quickly things had shifted, either. Nick brushed his paws on his shirt.

"You have me at a disadvantage, Ma'am," he said.

"I think I like it that way, actually." The old elephant flipped her trunk, clearly amused. "No offense."

Judy shifted. "Are you the homeowner, Ma'am?"

"Landlady," she corrected. She kept her attention on Nick. "Lived on this top floor for, oh, thirty-two years now. And if I'd known it was your friend come back up here, I don't think I would have even bothered you two at all."

Back. Now Judy was looking at him.

No, he'd never seen this elephant before. But she'd obviously been keeping an ear on him.

"I didn't know," Nick said. "I'm sorry."

"Well, you never made noise, or caused trouble." She nodded to the badge around his neck. "As loiterers go, you're still a considerate one." The elephant turned to Judy, as if sizing her up. "Enjoying the concert, Miss?"

"Yes." Her proto-smile vanished, and she looked appropriately guilty. "We'll take in the rest from ground level. I'm sorry."

"Suit yourself." Not even her trunk could hide the amusement this time. "The adagio is one of Rorgryn's better ones. It probably sounds better from up here."

And with another squeak of the sliding window she was gone.

Adrenaline buzzed around with nowhere to go. Nick felt his fur fluffing. Judy spent a long moment looking up at him.

They didn't say anything. Not yet. It would break the spell. She just sat back down and took his paw, waiting for him to sit too so she could rest her weight against him. They listened to the rest of the symphony, and Nick went right back to taking in her reactions and marveling at how small the world could get.

\---

It held through the end of the concert, and during their trip back to the evening train. Judy woud catch his eye and smile, but she didn't say anything until they had the elevator to themselves in Nick's apartment building.

"Lucky you, attracting more tolerant mammals."

Nick shook his head. "I didn't even know someone lived up there." He let her lead the way out.

"It turned out okay."

"Shame you had to scare me in the process," Nick said. "Feeding her your ID like that - what if she hadn't been so nice? We'd be doing paperwork for a month."

"It's a ruse, sort of." Judy grinned back at him as they arrived at his door. "I pulled out my badge without pulling out my badge. Friendly cop 101: being extra cooperative can put suspicious mammals off balance."

He watched her ears. "It certainly wasn't that you're so goody-two-paws you were actually going to do it."

"No, of course not."

They left the lights off as they entered - Nick because his night vision was more than enough, with the sunset coming through the windows; Judy because she was very familiar with his apartment, too.

It had gone better than okay, Nick decided, considering how he'd been chased off the odd roof before. Not only was that elephant aware of it, she'd let it go on, and seemed to be willing to kept letting it go on. Nick still wasn't used to the idea that a random mammal could know who he was, much less be so charitable toward him that they'd let Nick dally with his rabbit girlfriend on their property. Having a badge probably helped.

Having such a wonderful partner probably helped, for that matter. He didn't know anyone with the same zeal for both the letter and the spirit of the law that Judy had. But she was happy with how it had turned out too, if the way she was standing there on the edge of his bed and smiling at him was any indication. He stuck his muzzle alongside her neck and let her dig her claws into his shoulders.

"Thank you for the date," she murmured in his ear.

"I'm glad it went so smoothly this time," Nick said. "We're getting better and better at it. Next weekend we'll skip the extra case."

She was working on his shirt. "It's not like we'll ever be racing for good seats again."

"Mm." Nick applied gentle teeth to the edge of her ear and smiled as she fumbled a button. "That's trespassing."

"It's okay." Judy said. She grabbed the badge around his neck and pulled him down onto the bed. "I know a guy who's got an in with the landlady, and he's downright responsible."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I based Pallas Rorgryn heavily on Anton Bruckner. Here's his [4th symphony](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gljRZ-3BlcM).


	23. Remote Gardening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Judy called him nearly every night - and when her paperwork ran late, or Nick was too tired to keep his eyes open in the evenings, she stayed in touch anyway, with messages and pictures of the progress on their garden. There hadn't been much to look at until now, but he loved it all the same. It was something to look forward to.

It wasn't his fault. Nick was sure of that.

It might have started out being his fault, but Salvatore was the one to force the issue and turn 5K into 10K. He was the one Casset had yelled at.

Nick couldn't help himself. His fellow nuggets said things, things he really should ignore and brush off as the macho banter they were. But he never had been able to resist getting in the last word, and here at the Academy that silver tongue was getting him into more trouble than it was getting him out of.

It was just so easy to walk all over Salvatore. It wasn't Nick's fault the hyena tended to take physical offense to things. But Casset never cared who started it, just that it ended.

They hadn't been too late to dinner. As it was, Nick was the first one out, into the twilight on the quad.

There was a message waiting on his phone, now that he had time to check it. He felt his ears lifting. Judy had sent a picture.

It was from their rooftop garden. He recognized the improvised planter he'd helped her build before he left for the Academy. She was reaching into frame, to lift a tiny two-leafed seedling into the sunlight with one finger.

_Congratulations,_ the caption read. _It's a_ _Capsicum anuum._

Even with the exhaustion dragging at him, Nick had enough left to wag his tail. She had some way of just knowing exactly when he needed a lift to his spirits.

Judy called him nearly every night - and when her paperwork ran late, or he was too tired to keep his eyes open in the evenings, she stayed in touch anyway, with messages and pictures of the progress on their garden. There hadn't been much to look at until now, but Nick loved it all the same. It was something to look forward to.

Which wasn't to say he didn't enjoy training to become a police officer. He enjoyed that, too, even the strenuous parts that required focus and commitment and upper body strength. It was refreshing to be challenged, after a lifetime of coasting around the city and just getting by. Now, he wanted that chance to improve the world around him. Wanted that chance to work next to Judy every day, because she made it look easy.

His ears picked up soft footsteps from behind, and Nick turned off his phone before anyone could see how fondly he was staring at a certain rabbit's paw.

He'd never had roommates before, and his time at the Academy so far had just reinforced his preferences. Salvatore stalked past, all frosty silence, almost but not quite making contact. Nick expected he wouldn't try anything else for a couple of days, not while everyone was so fresh off the extra running he was technically responsible for.

A cheetah and an enormous rhino followed him: Kaine and Brookover, the unlikely duo. When they drew even, Brookover ducked in greeting.

"Wilde."

"Hey, Brook."

"Nice work pissing off the princess again."

"Listen, I just call things as I see them," Nick said. "He's the one who goes and takes them personally."

They weren't angry, he judged, so much as they were commiserating. Brookover spent all his free time exercising anyway, and Kaine had decided to specialize as a pursuit officer. Her job was to run.

"Try not to make him any crabbier, yeah? I'm not going to be in for a while tonight."

"Heavy things to pick up and put down?"

"Just bookwork. I have extra courses now." Brookover looked him up and down. "Have you decided yet?"

"On specialization? No," Nick said. He wanted to keep his options open for now, actually, because he hadn't had a chance to ask Judy what would work best with her schedule.

"There's always _botany_ ," Kaine said.

"Give it a rest, twig." A friendly nudge from Brookover could shift a parked police cruiser. Kaine nearly came off her feet.

Nick grinned. "Get caught taking notes on green beans just once, and they never let it go."

Kaine seemed to decide against returning Brook's favor. "What's that about, though? Seriously."

It felt a little strange to talk about it, actually, because of how personal it had become. But Kaine had asked, and Nick felt he owed them at least something for the part he'd played in their extra calisthenics tonight.

"A friend and I are working on a garden," Nick said. He shook his head at Kaine's eyebrows. "What? I'm allowed to have weird hobbies."

Brookover just shrugged. "As long as you don't let Salvatore find out." They came to the dorms and started to split up: Nick toward the doors, and the others toward one of the lecture buildings. "I'd like some sleep tonight."

"Of course not," Nick said. He watched them go, and decided he didn't want to deal with the hyena yet, either. Instead, he took the path toward the overlook at the corner of the little campus. Maybe if he went and got some air first, Salvatore would be out when he got back. As it was, he didn't want anyone listening in on this.

Judy answered on the second ring. Her perspective opened up to show her lying on her back in bed. What Nick had first taken for a blanket resolved itself into a soft button-down shirt large enough to fit him. She smiled.

"Hi, Nick."

"Hey, Carrots." Nick reset his expression. "I got your picture."

"It's one of four new sprouts," she said. "And your hot peppers are coming in, too. There might be flowers soon."

They'd started the garden just days before Nick had left for the Academy, but Judy somehow made him feel like he was tending it right along with her. "How soon until we can sample them?"

"Probably a month or so." Judy sat up. "Patience."

Nick parked against one of the trees. "No weeds?"

"Nope," she said. "I'm keeping a close eye on things, don't worry. How was today's training?"

"Tiring." Nick gave her all the gory details he would never bother his classmates with. She knew him so much better; she would always be sympathetic. And she would always be the one to get through to him.

"You could always try keeping your mouth shut. You wouldn't have to run as much."

"And let Salvatore get away with the nonsense he spouts?" Nick snorted. "Some things are worth it."

Judy rolled her eyes. "Do you want me to talk to him?"

"We need him to stay out of shock, sadly. He's got to pull his weight."

She shrugged. "At least the running will do you some good, then."

"I'll try to refrain from pointing out the obvious to him tomorrow," Nick said. "For your sake. What about you? How's work?"

"Desk day."

"Ugh. I thought the doctors cleared you."

"They happen. I am back on foot patrols, just not today."

"Getting your rest?"

She nodded and felt around offscreen. "Up to whatever strength orange is, too," she said, and held up the thin elastic therapy band where he could see. "This is going to be the last one."

They both ought to get some right now, now that Nick checked the time. But they both enjoyed these calls. He wasn't homesick, technically, but he did miss her dim apartment and the sense of her it carried. So they both sat there and chatted of things of less and less consequence, just for the excuse to spend time together. Nick considered asking about the shirt.

But soon enough she was yawning, reaching paws out of the short sleeves that might as well have been long ones to cover her mouth. They were infectious.

"You should go get some sleep, too," she said when she noticed he kept doing it, too.

"Salvatore might still be awake."

Judy tilted her head at him. "You've got this. I believe in your ability to ignore him."

"You're an inspiration."

Her perspective shifted 90 degrees as she tipped onto her pillow. Her ears flopped in a way that Nick felt a little guilty for enjoying. "A tired one. I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay?"

"Sleep tight, Carrots. I'll see you soon."

He let her end the call, just so he could watch her for that split second longer.

It was as much a recharge as any good night's sleep, Nick thought as he worked his way back toward the dorms and the more awkward realities of touchy roommates with something to prove. She probably knew that too, how he leaned on her like a lifeline.

The Academy wasn't bad by any stretch. Nick suspected he'd feel this way about having someone to talk to anyway, rigorous training or no rigorous training. He'd never had such a good friend before.

He'd never watched one so closely, for that matter, or spent so long thinking about their shirts.

He'd never gone through anything with anyone like he had with Judy.

Nick stopped and tried to look at himself the way he used to look at everyone. The con-fox in him would be disappointed, but then the con-fox in him had never started to make it _work_ with someone. That had to be worth savoring, right? Even if it was risky.

After all, it helped motivate him through the rough calisthenics, and the early mornings, and the occasional scorn from the likes of Salvatore. Tonight, Nick tuned it out and lay back in bed, and dared to think dangerous thoughts of how his best friend was settling down for the night, too - overlarge shirt and all.


	24. We'll Always Have Coffee [Thematic Thursday 12.08]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We're closest," Judy said again. "And if they're in trouble-"
> 
> "I know," Nick said. "You don't have to apologize to me, not for doing your job. You know that's not what this is about."
> 
> She cocked an ear at him. "You always worry so much about me."
> 
> "I do. And you have to admit I have a reason to this time, Carrots." Nick waved a paw out at the twenty feet they could see. "That's above treeline. The drifts are going to be as tall as you are."

The door cracked, and the cruiser's tenuous heat got stolen in a blast of flakes and fog. Nick shivered involuntarily.

Judy climbed into the driver's seat next to him, leaning out to grab the door and pull it shut behind her.

"Sorry," she said at his expression. "How's it going?"

"The scene report is almost done." Nick tapped at the keyboard in front of him. "That was the last of the ambulances, right?"

"It's the fire crew's lead now, yeah." Judy pulled her ears over to rub at their tips. Nick had the heaters going full-bore; she leaned over in front of the center one, close enough that the air currents ruffled her fur.

It was their third wreck of a long, cold evening shift. The process was a familiar one - get victims away from any immediate threats so the EMTs could take over, secure the scene against traffic, write the field report - but they didn't often do it all the way up in Tundratown, and they almost never had to compete with a natural storm on top of the engineered climate. It was easy to forget that there was 'real' weather outside Zootopia's famous biomes until it was roaring in over the northern mountains.

And so many mammals still decided it was a good idea to go out and test it. The storm was whipping warmer air from Rainforest over the north-south divide and into thick steam and fog on the colder side. Visibility was terrible. Nick and Judy were one of dozens of teams up and down the line right now, responding to wreck after wreck. Roads were icing, and then snowing over, faster than public works could clear them. Emergency services were very busy tonight.

"Where's the coffee?" Judy asked.

Nick stopped his paperwork and hunted around for the thermos they'd filled twice that day. From the feel of it, there were only a few mouthfuls left. He let Judy have them.

"Thanks."

"You worked hard out there."

"No harder than you. We both need some actual food."

Normally they would be able to escape the cold by heading back downtown, but with the storm sitting over the city there was snow on the ground there, too. Canyonlands had it best right now, according to their doppler link, and that meant pouring rain.

"You good to drive?" he asked. "I could take over."

"I think I'll make it," she said. "But yell at me if you see me drifting, okay?"

Judy took them slow and careful. The floods punched through fog and swirling snow as she angled them north, toward the nearest artery.

Nick settled back in his seat so the stream of the heater would wash over him and pulled up the latest met report from dispatch.

It was rough. The slow-moving storm was hammering the northern reaches even harder than down here. The weather team was calling for three feet in places by morning. City hall had issued a travel advisory hours ago; ZPD and the rest of the city's first responders were to shelve anything except emergency calls until the storm let up.

The good news was their shift was almost done. They'd shivered their way through six hours of waving down traffic and interviewing rattled drivers. Assuming they made it downtown without wrecking themselves, it was a short train ride to his apartment and a long, hot, shared shower.

Judy never complained. She took a weird sort of enjoyment from the hazard conditions, actually, just because it was a change of pace and the mammals they helped arguably needed it more than usual.

Nick liked being effective, too. But he also wanted to be there to hold his partner up in case the exhaustion ever got to her. Bunnies weren't really build for storms, no matter how determined and competent they were.

She always did have something to prove, though.

"North teams, we got something that isn't a car wreck." Dispatch sounded exhausted. "The university has a bunch of scientists out in this who missed three check-ins since this afternoon."

"They do this every year," someone came back. "Hospital ATC won't like sending choppers out in this again. Can't they just dig in?"

"They probably are dug in, but the travel rules means someone has to go make sure. It counts as an emergency now," Dispatch said. "500 block of summit road, on the divide."

On the divide? Nick frowned. That was way up in the mountains, almost an hour's drive out of the city proper.

"Four-two here," someone else radioed. "We're out of gas up here as it is, otherwise we'd check on it."

"Nick," Judy said. Her eyes were on the road, but her ears were on the radio. "How close are we?"

The promise of that warm evening started to ice over, faster even than the sideview mirror out Nick's window. Of course they were going to jump at this.

"You want to push that far up? It would take us almost half an hour to get there, even from here."

Now she did spare a look for the GPS. "Four-two was the only one closer, and you heard it. They can't risk going that far out. We still have half a tank."

"That's _really_ bad weather, Carrots."

"I know." She gripped the steering wheel. Her jaw worked. "But they're out in it, too. Something might have happened."

Their turn for the thoroughfare back toward downtown was coming up, faster than Nick had expected thanks to the limited visibility. They whipped right past it.

He took the pawset. "Dispatch, Car eight-one here. We'll check it out." He squinted at the map, and the weather overlay. "Are those roads even passable?" They built the cruisers to take a lot of punishment, but this might be pushing it.

"Only one way to find out," Judy said, almost to herself.

"We'll fit up one of the wreckers with a plow to come get you if you need it," Dispatch said. "Go safe."

"Copy." Nick put the radio back on its clip.

Left unsaid was that car eight-one was a fox and a rabbit. Polar bears or wolves would be far better suited to navigating uncleared terrain up there if it came to that. Dispatch wouldn't take long to put that together, either. Bogo would know, and the rest of the staff at Precinct One. They'd look at each other and shake their heads at Hopps and Wilde rushing off to save the day again.

And Bogo would probably be arranging for the rescue mission rescue mission himself, just in case. If this went poorly, Nick knew he and Judy were probably in for another talking to about appropriate resources.

"We're closest," she said again. "And if they're in trouble-"

"I know," Nick said. "You don't have to apologize to me, not for doing your job. You know that's not what this is about."

She cocked an ear at him. "You always worry so much about me."

"I do. And you have to admit I have a reason to this time, Carrots." Nick waved a paw out at the twenty feet they could see. "That's above treeline. The drifts are going to be as tall as you are."

"I know."

Her tone made him want to reach for her, to reassure her that he had already committed to this, in the ways that went right past words. But she needed her focus to drive.

So Nick sat back and started taking mental inventory of the tools and first aid gear they had in the cruiser, just in case.

\---

The Mount Sharp Climate Station was up here _somewhere_.

They couldn't see it from the road. There was an unlocked gate set back from the edge a bit, with a sign that matched the address and suggested this was where the nearest scientists would be right now.

But the roads were barely manageable as it was, even for the considerable abilities of their cruiser, which meant the path up to the building through the little gully was out of the question. If they wanted to leave them to go looking for any buildings, they'd be ditching the comfort and safety of the vehicle.

They were going to do this. That wasn't the question anymore. Nick turned to his partner.

"You ready?"

She was standing on her seat, with her parka zipped all the way up, plus a scarf or a balaclava she'd pulled from somewhere. All he could see in the glow of the instrument panels and computer screen were her bright eyes. She nodded.

"I wish we still had something hot to drink," she said. "In case they need it."

"There are blankets, at least, and a first aid kit. In the trunk." Nick pulled the radio again. "Dispatch, eight-one. We're at the main gate up here. About to head out."

"Copy that." The storm was kicking up a lot of interference - Dispatch's voice was fuzzy with static. "You know the drill, check in within half an hour or we're sending someone up there after you."

"Will do. Out."

They cracked the doors, and it was even worse than down at city level.

The wind howled up here, through the few remaining trees and over huge drifts of sandlike snow. It cut immediately into the places Nick's parka didn't cover. He felt his fur fluff out.

And the door only gave him about a foot of room before it scraped against the deep snow. He tested it with a paw - cold, oh so cold - and sank almost to his waist anyway.

He got the door shut behind him and struggled to the back of the car to wrestle the aid pack out of the trunk. Judy met him there and caught his elbow as he jumped back down into the snow.

"You okay?" he called over the wind.

"Yeah. Give me the pack. I'll carry it and you break trail."

The snow got almost twice as deep right off the road. Nick couldn't even lift his feet clear; he was just pushing through the drifts, onto his knees sometimes as it messed with his balance. Judy had hold of his tail. He could feel her warm little paws.

A few minutes later, they'd worked far enough up the gully to lose sight of the dark bulk of the cruiser. There were a pawful of tiny fir trees ahead - stunted things that would never get as large as the ones downslope - and a whole lot of blowing white, blocking out the summit line. It was disconcerting. There were mammals up here somewhere? Right now it didn't look like anything could survive.

But in another ten minutes of slow going against the snow they crested the ridge and there it was, half-covered by enormous drifts.

The station was brickwork, one level, maybe a thousand square feet. Dishes and antennas bristled from the roof, where they rattled and waved in the wind. There was a roll-down garage door on the lee side, and clean light shining through a window set into the door next to it.

"Someone's here," Judy called. Now she did push out to take the lead, even if it meant she was half-crawling on the snow. "At least they're out of this weather."

"No cars, though," Nick said. He was struggling to keep up with her enthusiasm. "Unless they're inside."

They came down the ridge and up to the door. She rapped on it.

"Hey! Hey, anyone home? It's Judy Hopps, ZPD!"

There was a muffled noise and someone pulled the door open. Warm air rolled out over them and an impala in a jacket peered out.

"Whoa, they sent you out in this?" She stepped back. "Inside, quick."

They crowded in, without tracking too much of the snow along with them. Judy thrummed her paws on the rough industrial carpet by the door to clear them.

The door thumped shut and cut out a surprising amount of the wind noise. A space heater whirred off to one side.

It was downright cozy. The fluorescent lights were on, to show a room given over mostly to a library of ceiling-height filing shelves and field lockers. There was battered, mismatched furniture near the front of the room by the garage door, and a row of desks in the back where some old computers sent their glow over the back wall. Three other mammals were looking up from their seats at the cold intrusion: a badger, a beaver and a mouse.

"Thanks," Nick panted. "It's bad out there."

"Did the university send you?" their host asked. "I told them this was probably going to happen."

"ZPD did," Judy said. "They said they hadn't heard from you since the storm started. Is everyone here all right?"

"We're fine," the impala said. She looked confused at Judy's cautious tone. "The radio hasn't been getting through, but we figured that was just because of the storm. If that happens we're supposed to buckle down until it blows over."

"You did it right," Judy said. She glanced at Nick, relieved. "This is just procedure, to make sure everyone's safe."

"We're okay," she said. "I'm Angela LeKamp, from Zootopia University. These are my grad students, Chris, Tori and Langley." She pointed.

"Judy Hopps." She shook her hoof. "And my partner, Nick Wilde. You said you were riding this out?"

"Yes. We got dropped off two days ago to study the mountain dynamics on severe weather systems."

"Everything but the radio's working," the badger said. "Generator, precipitation meters, even our radar." She held up a laptop that was cabled into one of the computers in the back. "See?" The screen showed a solid wall of storm right on top of them. It was getting worse before it got better, it seemed. "No cell signal, though."

"Are you safe to wait?" Nick asked. "It might be a while. We had trouble getting up here as it is."

"We've got cots over there in the stacks, and there's a little galley in the back," LeKamp said, and moved off to check one of the computers. "All the soup and instant coffee we can drink. It's not exactly the Palm resort, but it works."

"You two want some?" the beaver asked. He raised a steaming mug. "You look like you could use it."

"We have to call it in," Judy said. "So I don't think we can stay too much longer. Since your radio's dead, the one in our cruiser is the only one that can reach down the mountain right now."

"You're not going back out in it, are you?" LeKamp looked up from her screen. "All the way to the road? The snow is only going to get worse for a couple of hours."

It would take maybe fifteen minutes, in this weather, and that was all the time they had. Nick looked down at Judy. "Base is expecting a call, or they're going to send a rescue mission for all of us."

"Well, be careful if you drive, then," the badger said. "In about half an hour, it'll be total whiteout above treeline. If you need it, there's a couch here. We can play cards."

"I don't think we should risk coming back once we leave," Judy said. "Thank you, though."

"At least take something hot to drink with you," LeKamp said. "Hang on, I think there's an old thermos in the kitchen."

She reappeared a moment later with a battered metal tube and pushed it into Nick's paws. "Tell the University we're on schedule and that they can come pick us up as planned."

"Won't you need this?" he asked.

"Not as much as you might." She smiled. "Consider it thanks for checking on us in this weather. Just take it back to the meteorology department on campus, it'll find its way back here soon enough. Tori?"

The badger was pulling her own coat on next to Judy.

"I'm going to check the radio mast," she said. "Maybe see what happened."

"Don't go climbing on anything. We'll have maintenance sort it out when they can."

"Right."

"All set?" Judy was bundled up again. "We'll make sure the University knows you're all accounted for."

"Thank you, officers. Stay warm."

Back into the snow they went, and it felt even colder for the brief respite inside. Nick secured the thermos in his pack and followed the others back the way they'd come. The badger was craning up at the roof.

"It looks fine, but I can't tell from here." She shook her head. "It was a piece of junk to begin with. Maybe now the board will spring for a better one, and some Internet."

Judy was already on her way up the slope. Nick got ready to follow.

"Good luck," the badger said. "I'm serious about coming back if you have to. If it looks bad, we can make some room for you. We've got sleeping bags and everything."

"I appreciate it," Nick said. "I'll make sure Officer Hopps knows, too."

And she was gone, back inside to the warmth. The light from the door snapped shut on the snow. Nick hustled to catch up to his partner.

"Carrots, wait up!"

She was on a mission, wading uphill to the ridge as best she could. Nick reached out to help her keep her balance. She gave him a grateful look, and then the wind pulled her parka hood around and muffled her surprise. She started to tip over, and Nick gathered her closer.

"You're still in such a rush," he said. "Everyone's fine, sweetheart."

"We have to report it," she said. "Imagine Bogo's face if they have to send the wreckers after us."

"They can recall them if they have to." Nick held her there while they caught their breath in the bitter air, with his tail wrapped around between her slight form and the wind. Even with the unknown behind them, with the knowledge that there was no emergency and everyone involved was safe and warm, there was still something so anxious to her sense. She would tell him about it eventually, he knew. Until then, he would worry about her the way he knew she didn't want him to, and hold her against him until she relaxed a bit.

This was no warm apartment perch, but they had a view of the storm from up here that was unmatched. The gully below them was pristine - not even their passage would mar the smooth snow for long, not the way it was blowing around. It sheeted in and out of Nick's vision. The wind snatched their breath. They were out of view of the building now. They might as well have been the only ones in the world.

But eventually Judy squirmed against him, shifting from foot to foot. He took the hint, and the lead. He didn't want her shoving her way through the drifts right now.

They were both shaking with the cold when they made it back to the cruiser. Nick fumbled for the keys and yanked on the passenger door so there was enough room for him to insist that Judy squeeze inside. He had to stop at the back, to dig the exhaust out of a drift, and then he joined her. She had unbuckled her driver's booster and shoved it into the rear of the car.

"I say again, all four mammals at Mount Sharp Station are safe and sheltering in place." She had the radio in both paws. "They have heat and food to wait it out."

"Good copy, eight-one. You've made some University reps here very relieved."

"We're on our way back. ETA one hour."

"We'll leave the coffee on for you."

Nick turned the engine over, and relaxed as it fired right up. The console lights and outside floods snapped on, and glorious heat poured from the climate control.

But their breath was still misting in the cabin. Nick grabbed for the backpack he'd brought with him.

"Come here."

"What?"

"Come on." He motioned for Judy to cross over the console and into his lap. "And lose your coat. The car needs to warm up. I'm going to warm you up."

She got it as he wrestled with the thick rescue blanket from the aid kit. She zipped out of her coat and stepped across. He opened his so she would get body heat instead of windblown snow, and then wrapped both of them in the blanket and curled up to shelter her right there in the driver's seat. She was shivering under his chin.

"I'm sorry, Nick."

 _Called it._ He kissed the base of her ear. "They're okay, sweetheart. That's what matters."

"And we burned our night doing it. I didn't want to stay, because we couldn't be alone if we did, but it looks so bad out here. I don't know when we're going to get back."

With the action over, now that she was finally letting herself relax, the climate was catching up to her. Nick could hear her teeth chattering, and she was pushing herself closer to his warmth. He pressed the chilly tips of her ears between his laced paws.

"Get the coffee," he said. "It's in the bag by your feet."

It was terrible, too - there was no way to brew instant that made it taste like anything more than hot coffee-tinged water - but it was oh so warm, and that was what mattered right now. Nick leaned through the steam from the drink Judy had cupped in her paws to tap his nose to hers, and to kiss her. Her breath went out against his muzzle.

She worked so _hard_ , even when it got in the way of the things they wanted, even when it was downright risky. They both knew how to do that now, when called to. Yes, they'd missed out on some quiet time together, but that didn't mean they couldn't make memories. This one wasn't so bad, not even with the snow rattling against the windshield. They were here together and they were warming up, and that was enough.

Next would be to make sure she got the sleep she so deserved. Nick shared another cup of coffee with her, and then he had to let her go so she could take the blanket and buckle herself in.

"Are you okay to drive?"

"The coffee's kicking in. I'll take it slow."

She watched him. "Let me know if you need more."

"Thanks, sweetheart."

Judy's yawn was contagious. "I'll try not to fall asleep until we get back."

Nick pulled the emergency brake and took them out into the whirring snow. He couldn't blame her if it happened. It was going to be a long trip back to headquarters, made even longer by the difficult roads. But he would get her home safe.

And he would do whatever he had to to get Bogo to give them the morning off.


	25. Winter Coat

December was hell.

Nick liked the cold weather, actually, but for a few weeks at the beginning of the season he, like any furbearer, went through the crucible that was a winter coat coming in. Clothes felt like they fit wrong. Temperatures felt like they were set too high. And it was constantly-

_maddeningly-_

Itchy.

No matter what he did, no matter how often he showered or shook out or made the time to take a brush to it, his fur was jumping every which way within a couple hours. By mid-shift, he was ready to detour to Mystic Springs and borrow one of their palm trees.

Worse, a few days in, Judy started to notice. Wednesday, she teased him constantly. Thursday, she was smirking at the way his neck ruffed out from his collar. By Friday, she'd finally gone quiet, but for the occasional turn of her ears, or a twitch of her nose. It wasn't like her to be so distant, or so high-strung at the same time. But every time he brought it up she found some other paperwork to bury her nose in.

She was begging off the time they usually spent together after work, too. Nick was starting to wonder if he'd offended her somehow. He hadn't realized how much he'd come to enjoy sharing a bed or couch with someone until he couldn't anymore.

So he resolved to no do whatever it was that was bugging her - at least not where she could see or hear him - until she decided she was ready to talk about it.

It came up again while they were waiting at the light.

"Nick."

He froze, from where he'd unconsciously pulled his tail into his lap to scratch through it. "What?"

Her little claws drummed on the steering wheel. "You're doing it again."

"Sorry." He tucked his tail down the side of the seat. "Will you just tell me why you don't like it, at least?"

She chewed her lip. "Isn't it distracting? Every time I look over you're scratching."

"Yeah? You want to trade? Rabbits don't understand how bad this is."

" _No,_ just-" Judy twisted her ears to the dash-mounted camera - a cue to pack it in, again. They never could say what they wanted to in the cruiser. "We're almost done. I'm sorry, Nick. Listen, do you want to get food tonight? Can you bring Hearthseed by?"

"Sure thing," Nick said. It would give him an excuse to get some answers, at least. "You want the usual?"

"Please."

\---

So he brought it that night, and at her door he set the folded waxboard boxes down and indulged in one last shameless scratch. It was just as well there was no one else in her hallway right now.

Her spare key let him in. "Carrots?"

"Hi, you." Judy was sitting on the edge of her bed. Her ears tracked him. Her eyes took in his mussed fur. "Sit down. We need to talk."

"Okay." He sat on her chair and steeled himself to not move. He wanted to understand this, for her sake, too.

"I haven't been myself. I'm sorry. And I'm sorry I didn't say anything."

"Is this some bunny propriety thing?" he asked. "Something that just isn't making it over the gap? I don't want to look inconsiderate, sweetheart. It's just driving me nuts-"

"No, it's me, Nick." She took a breath. "I've been watching you all week. In the bullpen. In the car. On beat. Do you have any idea how hard it's been to keep my paws to myself?"

Nick Wilde was not often caught flatfooted. Now he stared.

"Say something."

This bunny. This _rabbit_. She'd scared him over this? Nick got out of the chair, raised a single claw-

And ever so slowly reached over to slide it under his collar and scratch his shoulder. Judy _squirmed_.

Oh, revenge was going to be sweet.

"So it's not me." It was so hard to pretend to frown. "Was the paperwork just an excuse?"

"We always have paperwork, you know that."

"You have some sort of denial kink? Because I can work with that, right now. You owe me, like you would not believe."

She giggled. "No!"

"I'm taking my shirt off anyway."

"Nick, I needed time." She reached over behind her pillow. "I had to order it in. The store was out of them this time of year, and I knew if I was around you before then I wasn't going to be able to make it as special."

It was a little wood-handled pawbrush, with stout bristles laid on an angle. Nick's eyes widened.

Judy stood on the edge of the bed and reached up to his throat, where he'd started to unbutton his shirt.

In one stroke, a week of subterfuge was forgiven. Nick felt his knees weakening.

"You're right, I have an apology to make," she murmured. "And you should put the food in the fridge, because I want this to take a while."


	26. Ticklus Interruptus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly suggestive content ahead.
> 
> Scene is based on a piece of art [here](http://nocturnal-district.tumblr.com/post/153979253867/clothes-take-time-to-draw-also-naked-also-these). [RATED QUESTIONABLE, PROBABLY. TASTEFUL NUDITY.]

"Ow."

Judy blinked down at him. "Ow?"

"Yes, ow."

"My claws aren't that sharp." She held them up so Nick could see. "Not like yours."

"They are when-" Nick twisted under her and pushed at her teasing paw. "When you pinch me. _Ow._ "

Judy scowled. "Fine."

She held up a single finger were he could see she wasn't going to pinch him, and jabbed the flat of it against his ribs under her leg.

" _Ow!_ Carrots-"

"That's what I thought. Uh-uh." She caught his wrists up and leaned forward to pin them against the arm of the couch behind his head. "You are _ticklish_ , Nick Wilde."

"Am not."

"Saying _'ow'_ and then reacting exactly like a ticklish person doesn't make it something else." She demonstrated. Nick yipped and writhed at her fingers digging into his abdomen.

Judy intensified her attack - and then found her arms very nearly pinned to her sides. Nick had wrapped himself around her, so tight it caught her by surprise. His cheek pressed against hers.

"And how do you know you're not actually causing me pain?"

She twisted to look at him - as best she could in their proximity, anyway - and pressed a paw to his chest. She could feel the steady, slow _thump-thump_ of his heart.

Had she? He had stopped her, but he did that sometimes, when he wanted to make a point or return her attention or remind her that he was there in the middle of the night, right where he was supposed to be.

It was a gesture of love, of protection, maybe even of jealousy. But not pain or anger. Never because of her.

She would recognize that if he ever really felt it. She was one of the only ones he ever showed it to.

It wasn't until he turned to look at her, too, that she realized she'd trailed off like this.

"I know what that looks like." Judy dug her fingers deeper against his fur - not to tickle, but to return the attention. "And this isn't it."

Nick had shifted around her, to put a paw up behind her head and keep her where she was, safe in his arms. His nose tapped against her cheek and pulled her around. He was chasing eye contact - and looking guilty.

"I can't hide anything from you, can I? You're a natural detective."

"I'm sorry, Nick. I'll cut it out."

"You can make it up to me," he murmured. "Easy."

"Oh?"

"Hold still."

Judy waited-

And bucked in his arms as she felt his pads squeeze her thigh, short and sharp.

_"Nick-"_

"See?" he laughed. He was so sly, so smug. " _See?_ Not so fun on that end, is it?"

He was so much bigger than she was, so fast and persistent and he knew, he just knew where she was most ticklish. Judy couldn't even breathe. His cold nose and soft tongue were against the inside of her ear, so sudden and overwhelming that she swore her _brain_ was immobilized with helpless laughter. It juddered down her back. She pawed at his chest above her.

"Wait, wait-"

He relented, and pulled her close. "Apology accepted."

"Your _tongue._ "

"What, this?" He licked the top of her nose. That tickled, too - or maybe Judy was just keyed up. They were moving now. Nick had picked her up, holding her carefully against him, aiming them for the bed.

"How am I supposed to fight that?"

"You don't," Nick said, and pulled her further up to drag his tongue across her collarbone. It made her toes curl. "Not now that I've tasted bunny."


	27. Old Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Callie gathered their mugs and gave Jules a look when she decided to keep her newspaper. "You heard how he sounded. Something's up. Nick might be an old friend, but right now he's a client. Get the table ready, just in case."
> 
> "It's not something dangerous, I hope," Sam said. 
> 
> "Not here," Callie said. She put their mugs away in the little kitchen. That much, she was sure of. Nick Wilde would never put trouble on their doorstep if he could help it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [SmugBeverage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmugBeverage/pseuds/SmugBeverage).
> 
> The masseuse triplets don't have canon names, so I improvised.

"Here." Callie held out the mug.

Sam took it and stuck her nose in the steam. "I ordered mint tea."

That made Callie stop. _"Ordered?"_

"Well, requested."

"And I'll get it in a minute, don't worry." Callie set her own mug on the bedside table. "That's for Jules. Give it to her."

"Don't know how you drink this earl grey stuff anyway." Sam said, and passed it on. "It's so bitter."

"At least it's actually tea," Jules said. She let her newspaper fall at the fold and reached over for it.

"You could put sugar in it."

"And ruin the flavor? The whole point is the bergamot."

Callie left them to it and went back to the kitchen to retrieve the third mug. They really needed to get a tray or something. With the weather turning, they were drinking it almost every night before bed to keep warm.

Everything else helped, too. They had thick comforters on the bed, and a plug-in fireplace on one wall that did a good job of heating up the space. Three bodies together was probably the most important part: They didn't have room for three beds, not with the therapy table on the other side of the divider in here. Just as well they'd gotten very used to sharing before they moved out here.

Now they sat under the covers and chatted about nothing and Sam made fun of Jules again for reading the old-fashioned paper instead of her phone. Callie was content to enjoy her tea and let her best friends' banter wash over her, until her own phone rang.

It was late, far past working hours, and they had a business line for business calls. The others caught on as quick as always, pointing their ears and muzzles over at her. Some things never really went away, not even years on.

It... wasn't anyone she was expecting. She grinned over at her bedmates, held a finger to her muzzle and tapped speaker.

"Nicholas Wilde. Are you in some kind of trouble?"

"Hi, Callie." He sure sounded beat. "I'm fine. I'm sorry it's so late."

"It's not like we go to bed early, you know that."

"Ahh. Hi, Sam. Jules."

Sam pouted. "How do you always guess?"

"I helped you move in, remember? The one bed is pretty obvious."

Jules' eyes were big. She looked over, and Callie had to shake her head at her. Sam had a paw over her muzzle.

"Listen, I wanted to schedule something. That favor you owe me."

A professional call. It would be, from him, even on her personal line. "Of course."

"Tomorrow sometime, or over the next couple days."

"Uh-huh." Callie eyed the others. "You're not nearby, are you?"

A beat of calculated silence. "No, it's not that time-sensitive."

"I heard that," Jules said.

"Heard what?"

"Come on, Nick. Whatever this is, it sounds important." Callie flopped onto her stomach. Sam reached out to stop her tail and lifted her mug clear. "You wouldn't call now otherwise. Come stop by, we'll buzz you up."

"It's been so long," Sam agreed. "We'd love to catch up."

"You know exactly where we live," Jules said. "Like you said, you helped us move. Are you going to make us wait up for you all night?"

They stared at the phone.

"I forget what it's like to argue with three of you," he muttered. "Fine. I'll be there in a few minutes. Thanks, ladies."

Sam, at least, waited until the call ended to squeak out her excitement and wriggle off of the bed. Callie rescued her mug before it could tip over.

"What do you think he wants? The full package?"

"This time of night?" Callie asked.

"We don't even offer the full package anymore, Sam," Jules pointed out. But she had a thoughtful set to her ears. "Though if ever there were a fox to make an exception for..."

"Oh, stop it," Callie said. She gathered their mugs and gave Jules a look when she decided to keep her newspaper. "You heard how he sounded. Something's up. Nick might be an old friend, but right now he's a client. Get the table ready, just in case."

"It's not something dangerous, I hope," Sam said.

"Not here," Callie said. She put their mugs away in the little kitchen. That much, she was sure of. Nick Wilde would never put trouble on their doorstep if he could help it.

And so they pulled the divider over to hide their bed a little bit, Sam rushed around hiding the few bits and pieces of their lives that were out of place, and they prepped the scalable table. This was their practice rig. There was no bamboo or candles or any of the trappings of their former lives as masseuses. It wasn't even as formal as the physical therapy program where they worked now, helping college footballers and hospital patients. But Nick knew all that already. He wouldn't mind.

The buzzer went off. Jules twitched toward it. Sam looked from it to them. Callie nodded.

Jules held the button down so the light on the other end would show.

"It's Nick Wilde," the voice came - a little tinnier than it had been on the phone, but definitely him. Jules hit the open button. Their ears caught light paws on the stairs outside.

Callie looked to the door - and stopped short as she saw they'd forgotten something red, lacy and not at all appropriate draped on a chair by the door. Sure, the matched bathrobes they wore right now were actually more modest than the things they'd usually had on at Kolsov's spa, but there were limits. She pointed Sam at it.

"What?" she asked. "It's not mine!"

"Jules? Seriously?"

She grabbed it, and stuck her tongue out at Callie as she went by to stuff it under their comforter. "Just because _you_ can't pull it off..."

There was knock at the door. Sam stood on tiptoe to check the peephole and squeaked again. She pulled the door open.

"Nick!" they chorused.

Except for his grin - which was as permanent a fixture as ever - he looked totally beat. His uniform shirtcollar was rumpled and stained with something. His tail was all wilted. The bags under his eyes looked like they were carved on.

"It's been too long, you're right. Hi, you three."

Sam pulled him inside. Callie and Jules went to either side to take his paws.

"Nick, what happened?"

"You told us you weren't in trouble!"

"Do you want some tea? I have a nice peppermint."

"Sam!"

"What? He looks like he could use a hot drink."

"And ten hours of sleep," Jules said.

"I'm all right, I'm all right." Nick extricated himself and held up his paws. "It's just been a long couple of days. Sorry to scare you."

"Not at all." Callie pulled him forward again anyway. "I think we can help with that. If you don't mind us being a bit rusty. These days we do more stretches and exercise than massage work."

"Yeah," Sam said. "If you ever twist your ankle, we'll sort you right out."

"Or your tail." Jules ran her paws through it.

Callie glared. "He just got here, Jules. At least let him catch his breath."

Nick chuckled - but Callie noticed he did pull his tail closer around his legs, once Jules let it go.

"It's not technically for me," he said. "I just need some tips, really, because I know someone who's in even worse shape than I am. I thought, why not talk to the best in the business?"

All of them paid very close attention to that. Callie's knowing grin couldn't compete with Sam's huge smile. Jules just looked heartbroken.

Yes, it was more of a running joke than anything. Nick - _Nicky_ \- had been in and out when they'd all had some sort of connection to the mob. He was famous for never settling down - until now, apparently - and he was still just as much of a heartthrob. The police uniform probably only helped.

She tapped the table, indicating he should climb on, face-down. Sam was adjusting the pillow. "You can keep your clothes on, no matter what Jules says."

"It is easier without them in the way," she pointed out.

That, of course, made him flush again and hesitate a bit before he committed to their direction and lowered himself onto the table. He had to adjust the uniform, too, when his badge seemed to dig into his chest.

"So what do you want to know?" Sam crouched so she could catch Nick's eye. "Who's the lucky friend you're going to try this on?"

"Sam..."

"Just a friend, honest. My partner." His ears would probably tell a different story, if Callie could see them properly. "But she's a ball of stress, too."

"Bigger or smaller than you?" Jules asked.

"A bit smaller."

"Lucky you," Callie said. She and Jules had their paws against his back. Nick had never been the touchy-feely type, and it showed in his tense shoulders. But she and her friends were experts. "Small mammals all have shoulders that are about alike." She traced a claw against the fabric of his uniform, where she could feel the resistance of fur and lean muscle underneath. He must have spent some quality time at the Police Academy. "Feel that?"

"Yeah."

"That's your trapezius. Try little circles, like this." They demonstrated.

_"Ow!"_

The vixens laughed.

"You really haven't been back here in long enough," Jules said. "So _stiff._ "

Sam focused on his neck. "How's being a cop?"

"Busy. Long hours, lots of rules, rules for those rules." He twisted under their attention, until Jules reached out with firm claws to keep him still. "It's worth it, though."

"Be careful with her neck," Sam said. "Gentle pressure on both sides, like this."

They worked down his body, keeping their paws exactly within the margins of decency despite his clothes. Jules couldn't say the same for her eyes, but at least she looked guilty when Callie scowled at her.

They moved as a team the way they had back when they'd done this so many times for heftier polar bears. Now, it was easy; Nick was only a little bigger than they were.

"Are you lifting heavy things?" Callie asked. "Sure feels like it."

"Not usually. We did today, though."

"Like what?" Even this little bit of attention had been enough to get him to loosen up. When they pulled him upright Callie could see it had fixed the cant to his shoulders. He rolled his neck and seemed pleased with his range of motion.

"Massage therapist shouldn't have to mean _actual_ therapist," he said, and now he did look a bit uncomfortable again. "I'm not supposed to talk about most of it anyway."

"Who are we going to tell?" Sam asked.

"It's not about that," he said. "I know you guys are on the level. It's just not polite conversation, at all." He winced at two sets of paws on his ears, but then he relaxed and tilted his head so they could work. "Things happen, down at the docks."

They looked at each other. It could have meant anything, but that the police were involved probably made it something nasty indeed. They'd overheard plenty of stories and chatter about the darker corners of the freight yards, in their time working in Koslov's steam room. Not all of his friends and business associates had been as... refined as he had.

"Do this with her ears." Jules, at least, had always known how and when to turn the mood around. "Should turn her into a little puddle, no matter what species she is."

"I'll bet," he said. She was making him squirm, and not just because she was leaning so close. "Wow. Is that safe for sensitive ears?"

"As long as you take it slow."

"And that's all there is to it, huh?"

"Well, we've had some practice," Jules murmured. "You could always bring her down to the therapy lab at the University, or even the spa. We've got some contacts."

"I bet we could swing a nice deal for ZPD," Sam added. "The way you helped us out before."

"Let him be, you two," Callie said. "Sorry, Nick."

"Want some tea?" Sam asked again.

"Okay, okay," Nick chuckled. "One mug."

She zipped off.

They showed Nick which parts of his paws to use, and how to keep his claws from prickling too much, and then they pushed the table and divider back out of the way and clustered against the edge of the bed with their tea, in front of the fireplace. Nick sat on the floor to one side and they grilled him on his new career.

He was, by his own admission, fulfilled. And he seemed different from even the easygoing fox Callie had known back when he was running odd jobs for Big. His genuine smile was a bit quicker. But he looked a bit older, too - and when talk turned to their own shifting jobs, there was something edging into his eyes that even the best masseuses in Tundratown probably wouldn't be able to get rid of.

"You're doing okay at the University, right? Koslov's weird buddies are leaving you alone?"

"We haven't seen or heard from any of them since we moved," Callie said. "And if we did, he and Big would put a stop to it. They check in, you know."

"ZPD will help, too, if you ever need it," Nick said, and relaxed a bit. "If something ever comes up, official or otherwise - you know where to find me."

"We're fine, Nick." Jules swished her tail at his, and Sam nodded along on his other side. "But you're a sweetheart for worrying."

"If you ever came and said hello we could show you the clinic," Sam said. "I think Jules is right, you cops could all probably use a nice _relaxing._ "

"Most of the time it's just paperwork," Nick protested. "I get cricks in my neck from bending over the desk."

"Well, make sure your chair is at the right height, then," Sam said. "And take breaks every half hour."

"You an occupational safety inspector now?" Jules asked.

"Hey, you learned that, too."

"I do take breaks," he said. "There's always more of it, though. I underestimated that part of the job." He looked down at his phone. "And I really should get back to it."

Callie grinned. "You're not getting massage tips on the clock, are you?"

"No, the reports just chase me home sometimes. I was going to work on them tonight while my partner finished up at Precinct, but-" he looked around at them. "It was nice to come say hi, too."

They all got reluctantly to their feet. Sam took his empty drink and Jules hugged him goodbye all the way to the door.

"We mean it when we say you should bring your special someone by," she said. "I promise we won't weird her out too much."

Nick's tail curled at the _special someone_ , but he was smiling, too. "Send me something about the clinic, then. I'm sure she'd love it. And you three are better at it than I ever could be." He stepped into the hallway. "Thanks for the primer, seriously. It's amazing how well that works."

"We owe you, you know that," Callie said. She held up a paw before he could protest. "Still do. Just say the word."

He conceded the point with good grace, waved a paw goodnight, and was gone.

Sam shut the door behind him and very nearly squealed again.

"Nick has a special someone!"

_"Don't-"_ Jules actually stomped her foot. "Don't say it. It means we were too late."

"Poor baby." Callie rolled her eyes and hugged her friend close. "You know it never would have worked out."

"Just let me dream."

"Small, also a cop, sensitive ears." Sam was ticking attributes off on her paws. "Fennec, maybe? Does ZPD have any other foxes, or was Nick the first one?"

"Ears?"

"You saw how he focused on that. It has to be important."

They followed, as Jules led the way back to the bed and flopped facedown.

With their second round of drinks done, they curled up in a row underneath the comforter. Callie got the light and they lay back to watch the fake fireplace flicker and glow. Next to her, Sam eased closer and found her paw - though only briefly.

_"Bunny."_ She sat bolt upright. "She's a bunny. That one on the posters!"

"But-" Jules propped herself up on her elbows. "A bunny?"

"It has to be." Sam was bouncing. "She's the only one that fits. Oh, Nick, you _fox_. I want to meet her!"

"Actually, I'll bet he doesn't fit at all," Jules muttered.

"Gross," Callie snickered. "She's his co-worker."

Jules shrugged. "And? We're co-workers." She leaned over to hold Sam down. "Quit it, you. You're going to make the bed squeak."

Between the two of them they eventually got her to settle down, but not before she had them all grinning, with plans to get Nick to meet them for a proper appointment at the clinic so they could get the rest of the juicy details.

Maybe that was why he'd seemed more open to the idea of meeting them at the University, Callie thought. If Sam was right, bringing his friend back here might have been a lot for her to take in all at once. They did play it up with Nick pretty heavily.

Not that Callie could deny a private little pang of her own, knowing that Nick had found a partner, maybe in more ways than one. Whoever she was, she had to be someone special.


	28. Christmas Dinner [Thematic Thursday 12.22]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Oh, no." Her mother leaned close. "You're still at work at this hour? They didn't give you the day off?"
> 
> "I'm just finishing up some paperwork," Judy said. "Almost done."
> 
> "Is Nicholas with you, at least?"
> 
> "He has an even more important job than saving the world right now." Judy twirled her pen. "I had to teach him why Christmas dinner is important."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for /trash/'s Thematic Thursdays.

Judy fidgeted with the pen on her desk, listening to the way its tapping echoed around the otherwise empty cubicle and office.

Working over Christmas wasn't all that different from any other day of the year, but it sure felt like it. Judy might have stopped hyping up the holiday ahead of time back when she was a kit, but now that it was on them the nostalgic pull of gifts and celebration and family time was stronger than she'd expected.

Of course, she'd done some of this to herself, when she'd told Nick to leave early.

Neither of them enjoyed leaving the other to do paperwork alone, but Judy had convinced him this time by pointing out he'd done nearly all the legwork on the drug case to begin with. This was just her doing her fair share.

To make him feel better, she'd charged him with the one family tradition she insisted on keeping, even as an independent adult: figuring out what to do for the night's Christmas dinner. Neither of them had planned anything ahead of time. They'd been busy with the case, for one, and Nick had eventually confessed his family never made a big deal of it, either.

That wasn't going to fly. Dinner had to be special, she told him. Even if it was just the two of them.

So she finished the paperwork, and he figured out their evening. He'd gotten a little smile about it before he left; she suspected he was planning something over-the-top, like pulling on old strings to get them a table at Morgiano's again. He'd already texted her once, asking about 8PM.

Now, hours on, it was a little hard to focus. She still had toxicology test results to forward and arrest records to reference, and the office was so dead and empty she could hear the whine of the fluorescent lights overhead, and the quiet chatter from down the hall in dispatch. There was a decent staff on call; they were just all out keeping eyes and ears on things instead of working at base.

She had made two lines of progress when her phone rumbled across the desk and nearly made her jump out of her fur. It was her parents.

Well, it wasn't like there was anyone else here to disrupt this time of night. She donned her headphones and answered.

"Hi, Judy! Merry Christmas!" Her parents were in the kitchen at home, waving from behind steaming mugs of soup or cocoa or something. She could hear the riotous noise of dozens of rabbits, and could see at least a few of them darting around and laughing at the edges of the frame.

"Hi, mom. Hi, dad." She grinned. "Merry Christmas to you, too."

"Oh, no." Her mother leaned close. "You're still at work at this hour? They didn't give you the day off?"

"I'm just finishing up some paperwork," Judy said. "Almost done."

"Is Nicholas with you, at least?"

"He has an even more important job than saving the world right now." Judy twirled her pen. "I had to teach him why Christmas dinner is important."

Her parents looked crestfallen.

"That poor boy," Bonnie said.

"At least you know what to do if he doesn't get the message," Stu said. "Did you get your tickets, Jude?"

"Last night, yeah. We'll be back this weekend for a couple of days."

"Then we'll feed both of you home cooking until you can't move. We'll have plenty left, even when you get here."

Hopps holidays were multi-day affairs sometimes. It's what came with having a family so large. Not everyone could get home the day of, like Judy, so they stretched them across nights and into weekends. But her parents always made sure to call on Christmas day.

"I wouldn't miss it," Judy said. "We're counting down the days, believe me."

"There are some presents here, for both of you," her father said. "Winter has been wrapping things all afternoon, so expect some weird surprises."

"And stay warm until we see you, okay?" her mother asked. "It's getting chilly here. Pack your sweaters."

"I will. Thanks, mom."

"We love you, sweetheart. See you and Nick soon."

They ended the call.

Now it was really hard to keep her mind on her work. But it would be nice to leave for the holiday and not have to come back to something unfinished. She bent back to it.

"Why are you still here, Hopps?"

It was Fangmire, on his way past for more coffee. He leaned on the cubicle entrance as Judy scribbled through the last of the line.

"I'd ask you the same thing, Captain."

"This is Bogo's year to have the day off," the tiger said. "We trade. What's your excuse? And where's your partner?"

"I'm finishing this so we don't have to do it later." She pointed her pen at the folders. "Nick's out arranging dinner."

"Okay, good. At least you know that's important."

"You've got dinner plans, right?"

"Once overnight rotates in." He nodded and continued on his way. "Seriously, give yourself a break and get out of here."

"Almost done."

Judy considered more coffee herself, but there was only one page left. Better to wrap it up and just get home. Especially if Nick had made reservations somewhere like his messages suggested.

She slapped the binder closed, pushed it into place on the "to file" shelf, and shut down for the night. The lobby was at half light for the evening, and totally deserted. Clawhauser was out for the holiday, a couple days ago now. He'd left his red stocking cap on the counter.

She tapped out an _on my way_ message to Nick and pushed through the revolving door.

It was even chilly downtown. No snow on the ground, but there was a stiff winter breeze up that made Judy grateful for her thermal uniform. She needed to find some ear warmers.

Travel was actually easier than she expected it would be for Christmas night. Everyone must have already been where they were going. The train to Nick's apartment was looking to be on time, and the roads around the downtown station were quiet. There was just one car that Judy could see, pulled off to the side. Its hazards were going.

Judy stopped on her way by. An older capybara was rummaging in her trunk.

"Is everything all right, Ma'am?"

"Oh!" She straightened and blinked at Judy on the sidewalk. She had a balaclava drawn tight against the cold. "Oh, hello officer. Yes, I'm all right. I just got a flat tire."

"Can I help you fix it?" Judy pivoted, before she had time to really think about it. This would get her home later, but Nick would understand. Someone needed her help. "Do you have a spare?"

The lady slumped in relief. "That's so kind of you, Officer..."

"Hopps. Judy Hopps."

"Linda Grisham. I do have a spare." She gestured to the trunk. "But the jack is broken, I think. I've never used this before."

Judy peered at it. The folding jack was a bit rusted over. The threading on the crank looked to have seized.

"I think we've got a few back in the garage at headquarters." Judy pointed back behind them. "I'll got get one. Are you warm enough? Do you want to wait inside?"

"Oh, thank you, no. I'm all right here. I have a casserole to keep an eye on."

A casserole? Judy looked, and almost laughed. It was buckled into the front seat, like a passenger. "Going to Christmas dinner?"

"Yes." The lady smiled. "With my son and daughter-in-law. They live on the south side."

"I'll try not to make you wait too long, then. Be back in just a minute."

"Thank you again, officer!"

She jogged for the lobby. Did they even have tools for a car that small? All of their cruisers here fit rhinos and elephants. She didn't think she could lift one of those big jacks.

"Hopps, I know you love your work-"

Judy held up a paw to cut Fangmire off. He had his coat on, at least. He was headed out, too. "I know, I know. I'm going. There's someone by the train station with a flat. Do we have a jack for a capybara-sized car?"

"Maybe." They started down the hall to the garage together. "I'll help you look."

\---

They had one for the mid-scale unmarked cars that was probably bigger than it needed to be, but it would work in a pinch. Fangmire followed Judy out to where the woman was waiting, casting anxious glances through the passenger window where her cargo waited.

Ahead of them, the 8:00 train rang its bell and rolled out of the station. It would be a half-hour until the next one came through. Judy watched it go, and tried to put it out of her mind. She needed to tell Nick she was going to be a bit late.

The capybara had the spare rolled out and ready to go. Fangmire inspected the bolts she'd loosened and nodded to himself.

"Hopps, can you spin that jack open?"

"Yep." It would take a minute, under the weight of the car, but she wasn't going to make Fangmire do all the work. He'd carried the thing out here for her.

Now he set it down near the driver's side tire. "Ready?"

"What?"

He winked and set his massive paws under the front bumper, and hoisted the front half of the car smoothly off the ground.

"Oh, my," Grisham said.

_"Fang!"_

He wasn't even straining. "What?"

It would make her job easier, at least. It was lucky neither of them had cameras on - but then, he probably wouldn't have done it if they had. She rolled her eyes and got busy spooling the jack open. "They don't like it when we do that," she explained for their companion. "Something about liability and setting a bad example."

"Can't hear you over how much time you're saving there, Hopps."

"Yeah, yeah. Ready." She got the jack lined up and Fangmire lowered the car carefully into place. Grisham helped with corralling the lug nuts, and they got the spare tire switched out.

"I don't know what I would have done without your help, officers," Grisham said, when she was back in the driver's seat.

Judy waved it away. "It's the least we could do. Now you'll be able to get to dinner."

"I'm sure I can't ever repay you."

"It's our job, Ma'am." Fangmire waved a self-deprecating car jack. "Don't worry about it. Just drive safe."

"Of course. Thank you both again, and Merry Christmas."

Fangmire watched the car go. "Now will you go home?"

"Believe me, I'm trying."

"I'll sort this," he said. "When's your next train?"

"8:30."

He winced. "Sorry."

"No, this was important." Judy dug in her belt for her phone. "Nick gets that."

"I'd give you a ride."

"You do have dinner plans, right?" She looked her captain up and down, and the way he grinned. It was true, they didn't have cameras, so she felt safe asking. "Get an invite from Shayler?"

He didn't have to answer - the conspiratorial lash to his tail did that just fine. He saluted with the jack. "Merry Christmas, Hopps. Tell Wilde I said hi."

"You bet."

He had called, she saw as she waited under the heat curtain for the train. And texted. She held her phone to her ear, and fought the sinking feeling in her stomach.

"Hey, you."

"Nick, I'm so sorry." She looked down the tracks, willing the nose light of the next light rail to materialize in the dusk. "There was a woman here who needed help with her tire."

"It's okay, Carrots, it's okay." She could almost see his sympathetic ears. "Are you on your way home?"

"The next train will be here in about ten minutes."

"Okay." A pause. "There's no rush."

"I saw your messages."

"Well, I finally got through to the desk at Morgiano's, and they're booked into next week, so that wasn't going to happen anyway."

She knew it. "Oh."

"It's a shame. If Stephane had been working tonight we probably could have booted someone."

"That's mean."

"You deserve nice things," he said.

Judy felt her ears warm up in the chill. "So now what? Do you want me to bring something back with me? I think the grab-and-go is still open, but I know that's not the same."

"No, you come here and then we'll think something up," he said. His voice was light, and she had to assume it was forced. "I have a couple ideas."

"Okay. I'm sorry, sweetheart."

"I love you."

And it sat in her mind the whole trip home, while the businesses and condos slid by far too slowly out the windows of the train.

She knew Nick didn't blame her. He never could. And he'd said it himself - it had been moot, when it came down to it. But Judy felt like the chance to make this special they way it had been every year before was slipping out of their paws, one coincidence and missed call at a time. She would eat peanut butter sandwiches with Nick, and love every moment of it. But she wanted to make this special for him, to give him something he'd never had.

The cold pulled at her, as she hustled between his stop and the lobby of his apartment building. Tundratown would be getting a thoroughly white Christmas, with that cold front sitting over the hills to the north. Even Rainforest was feeling it, sending a thick fog over the biome lines. Maybe it would be a good night to bundle up for a quiet walk somewhere.

She took the stairs to his floor two at a time, and took a moment at his door to steel herself to keep the disappointment from being too obvious. She would tell him, and he would understand, but she didn't want it to color their evening.

She opened the door-

And stood slack-jawed as the wave of delicious sensation washed over her. She smelled garlic on the warm air, and rosemary, and fresh sourdough, like she was back at home and her mother was baking for the holiday.

Nick popped his head out from the kitchen nook, grinning from ear to ear.

"There you are."

" _Nick!_ What-"

He caught up her paws and pulled her in so the door latched behind her. He was wearing a canvas apron she'd never seen before, that nearly matched the creamy fur at his throat. His scent mixed with the tang of garlic as she returned his hug.

"Nick, did you _cook?_ I thought you were trying to get a reservation!"

He didn't set her down, but held his paws under her legs so she could sit back and look at him properly.

" _Cook_ is generous," he said. "But I can follow directions to assemble food all right." They went into the kitchen.

Nick had made creamy potato soup, with spices and the last of the season's carrots from their own garden. It bubbled in a pot on his stove. He'd chopped celery into it, too, and there was a loaf of bread still steaming on the counter.

It was too much. Judy didn't know if it was the stress coming off, or the deliciously pungent garlic, or what, but her vision was blurring.

"Nick, this is incredible."

"I had to buy the celery at the store, and I ran out of milk about halfway through, so it's going to be a little thin." But Nick was _proud_ , the way he watched her take it in. "It's a good thing you had to stay late, actually. I had to soak the potatoes for longer than the recipe said."

"How long?" She asked, and squirmed around in his arms. "How long have you been planning this? You had to have started before we even knew about today."

"Last night, I think."

"So the reservation was a ruse to start with."

"Guilty."

No wonder he'd agreed to leave her to work. It was probably the only reason he would. He set her down and Judy dragged her little stool over to stand up by the stove with the wooden spoon he'd stirred the pot with.

Oh, it was delicious. Creamy and sharp with garlic and full of hearty vegetables. There was even cheese, to sprinkle on top so it would melt.

She tipped back, against Nick's chest where he'd come up behind her. His paws circled around her waist.

"I know this is really important to you," he murmured, and nosed at her ears. "You've been talking for a week about how your family's always done things. I figured since we can't get back until this weekend, we'd better make sure we do something special for the night ourselves."

Words weren't really enough to articulate how much Judy agreed with him, how much she owed him for his thoughtfulness, how much she _loved_ him for the things he did to make her happy.

The notion of gifts hadn't come up between them, even if that tradition was as old as the holiday. They hadn't gone out of their way to wrap things up for each other.

But then you couldn't wrap something like this. It was something to be enjoyed and shared and remembered.

"Are you hungry?" Nick asked.

And she turned in his arms, with the long wooden spoon still in her paw, and hugged him close to pour at least some of that happiness out for him, the best way she knew how.

"I meant for soup," he said, when she let him breathe.

 _Fox._ "I love you, so much more than I can say."

"The kitchen is boring. Let's eat on the couch. I have the big mugs."

In a big fluffy blanket, watching the city go to sleep around them. It was perfect, she thought as she held him close again before he could reach for the dishes. She could repay him in kind when they had finished their meal - and they wouldn't even have to move.


	29. Ice Them [canon divergence]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a what-if scenario I wrote based on [this image](https://68.media.tumblr.com/0aee69ec2f28ee66a064f890ef561b31/tumblr_oig92uDOuj1vf1s1xo1_1280.png) from [ReplyAnon](http://replytoanons.tumblr.com/) over on /trash/. **Suggestive** for incidental nudity.

His claws made muffled rasping noises against the sheet that might as well have been steel. There was no getting through it. There was no escape, no air down here, just bitter, bitter cold that Nick could already feel creeping in. He could hold his breath for minutes and the immobilizing nothing would still kill him.

So he beat and flailed and slashed at the ice because his unconscious brain was in control now, until something seized him by the collar of his tie.

Two grey, bracered feet kicked them off and back away from the ice, out of reach of that impossible safety. Nick looked over, to panic, to demand what this cop thought she was doing. But Judy's eyes were squeezed shut against the cold, and Nick felt his following.

The last thing he remembered was the tug of the current against his paws.

\---

And the sudden air. Nick was still convinced he was drowning in the dark - but he could hear himself hacking the water clear of his lungs. His splashing echoed against low brick archwork.

He was in the canals, somewhere upstream from Glacier Bay. How had he made it here? All he could remember was the ice, and watching it fade as Judy had pulled them-

Judy.

She was cold as death as he scooped her out of the shallows, and now his heart did pick up with the adrenaline, in a way he hadn't felt for a long time. If he was too late-

No. Her chest rose and fell, somehow. But she was shaking with the awful cold in his arms, just as badly as he was. And the air down here was even worse than on the surface. Their fur was freezing into spikes. They had to dry off, or the hypothermia would kill them as surely as the water would have.

And yes, it was _them_ now. There was no question of looking after just himself. It might have served him well all these years, but Officer Hopps had dragged him past that as soon as he'd decided to go after that pen in Tundratown. It had stopped being a game. Now she was his responsibility.

Karma had a hell of a sense of timing.

_Shelter, warmth. That order._

It came out of nowhere, some fragment of half-remembered wilderness training he'd only just started to absorb as a kit, before that fateful night he'd left the Junior Ranger Scouts.

But it was his best shot. Their best shot.

He carried her on shaky feet, over to the edge of the tunnel, out of the shallows where the bricks jutted from the wall.

This part still gave him pause, even now. She might as well be a stranger. But they had to lose their soaked clothes. This uniform of hers didn't feel like it was designed for water.

He stripped them both naked, cursing his deadened paws as they fumbled the catches on her stab vest, screwing up his eyes to grant her what modesty he could.

_Warmth._

His shirt, wrung out, was big enough to blanket her, but it wasn't going to be enough.

Nick staggered further down the walls, scouring the edges. Something down here had to be dry.

There. A mangled shipping pallet, and another. And the remains of a couch cushion with stuffing leaking from it.

And ignition? There was no lighter on her belt. She didn't have a taser. Stupid rabbit, what kind of cop didn't carry a taser? He twisted to look at her again.

She was still alive. Her breath was misting over her head, faint and wispy.

Would they send someone to check? To make sure the job was finished?

_Focus. Focus._ He was losing track. They had minutes. Worrying about enforcers would be moot if they died before someone found them.

He needed sparks. There was a chunk of brick, and a piece of rebar.

But he had to do this right. The wood wouldn't take, all on its own. He wrenched the pallets apart, ignoring the ache in his elbows and wrists, and fell on the pieces, shredding them to kindling with his claws and his own teeth.

He set the rebar end-first in a pile of the stuffing and struck it with the brick.

Nothing.

_Come on, Wilde. Again._

He couldn't feel his paws anymore. Twice he jammed his thumb under the brick, but there was no pain. There was just the rhythmic hammering, again and again on the metal. One of these had to work.

She was still breathing.

_Again._

In and out.

_Again._

The sparks leaped, like stars, and Nick sobbed.

He cradled the foamy stuffing and blew, carefully, gently, until it whispered into flame.

_Tinder, kindling. Fuel. One at a time. Long enough for each to take._

The crackle of that wood was the most beautiful thing he'd ever heard. He couldn't feel the heat yet - one of his paws actually caught, just for an instant before he slapped it out - but he would eventually.

She would.

She was still breathing.

Nick crawled over to her, paws and knees digging against the ice and gravel on the old concrete, and gathered her into his arms.

Her heart raced, agonizingly slowly. She was light and fragile against him, making him clumsy in his frozen attempts to be gentle.

She had saved his life.

Karma, indeed.

He didn't know if she would wake up, or what she would do if she did. There was no way to spin being curled around her, as naked as she was, with his paws on her ears in front of them to warm them up, keeping her sheltered as close to the fire as he dared.

But it didn't matter now. If they came out of this alive, even if it meant she would throw him in prison for the rest of his, Nick would take it.


	30. I Knew it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a follow-on story to the events of [Following up](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6727384/chapters/17738860), where Nick and Judy visit Bellwether in prison for help cracking a case. I'd suggest reading that one first.

Nick nearly ran into Judy as she leaned back to brake to a halt at the mouth of the alley. She pushed her back against the brickwork and drew her taser, and watched him follow suit.

"Just in case," she said.

"Oh, good." Nick checked his charge. "Do these even work on wool?"

"One way to find out." She rolled around the corner, going low while he went high. At the end, in the light of the single service lamp over the bar door-

Was an empty alleyway.

They were too late.

Judy cursed, and it was so coarse and unexpected that Nick turned his head to stare.

"I _knew_ it." She rammed her taser back into her holster and switched it for her radio. " _Marki!_ Marki, we're too late here. I think he's already moving your way."

"We're ready."

Nick felt it, too. Their quarry was a very slippery ram named Laurence, and he'd been ducking out of various nets for two weeks now.

They had his schedule down pat. They had a good idea of where he was, and what he was doing: ringleading property damage and general mayhem, as some sort of protest for how City Hall was shaking up now that elections were underway again.

He'd had ties to Bellwether - maybe not part of her Nighthowler scheme; that was almost a year past now - but he'd at least been a sympathizer. They'd dragged that much out of her the last time they'd been down to question her, before Judy had called it off. Nick didn't like the way that sheep could get to her.

And it sure would have been nice to be able to throw Laurence in the pen alongside, just to wipe the sneer off Bellwether's face.

The problem was they were always seconds too late. Almost literally, in this case.

"I knew we shouldn't have checked his other meeting place first." Judy stuck an ear to the backdoor of the bar, listening for activity over the music. "As soon as we saw the approach was quiet we should have moved."

Nick took a deep breath through his nose. Past the pungent aroma of dumpsters in full sunlight, there was something familiar. He held up a paw and frowned at the ground.

"What?"

There it was. Nick pointed. A single cigarette butt was twisted against the chipped concrete, still smoking faintly where a split hoof had stomped it mostly out. "That's his brand. Had to have been a minute or two, tops."

"His cigarette's still hot here," Judy radioed as she came up beside him to look. "You should have plenty of time."

It was a break, maybe. The closest they'd come so far, in days of ground-pounding. And now they pretty much knew where Laurence was headed. He had a garage bolthole a few blocks north of here, a sort of chop shop where he and his cronies took stolen goods and stowed the occasional vehicle. ZPD had left it alone until now, just so they could keep an eye on him, and maybe herd him that way if they had to.

It looked like it was about to pay off, too. Marki and her group was ready to surround the place. They just needed someone outside their ring, to make sure nobody else slipped out of it.

Judy was frowning up at the fences in that direction, impatient, as if she could see the trap about to spring. Nick waited until she looked over.

"At least this way, we don't have to do the booking paperwork on top of everything else."

Her ears wilted in exasperation at his constant good humor. "Now he has one more chance to change his mind and slip away again." Her foot rapped against the ground. "We were _this_ close."

"Let Marki take care of it, this once." Nick held up his taser. "Her team hits a bit harder than these would."

She sighed. "Yeah."

Nick held the gate at this end of the alley for her. With Laurence gone, they didn't have to worry about keeping as low a profile. Just as well. They would have to hurry to make overwatch.

Their cruiser was parked two alleys over. Nick drove aggressively, angling for the parking structure that would give them a good view of the garage.

"Where's the field kit?" Judy twisted around to rummage in the little equipment locker behind them.

"I changed it out."

" _What?_ Nick, we kind of need those glasses."

"Those glasses are useless for anything past a couple blocks," Nick said. he jerked a thumb at the backseat. "I got you something better."

Her eyes widened in the flashing overhead lights of the garage as Nick took them up. The case in the backseat was almost as big as she was. "That's-"

"One of the new spotting scopes? You bet it is." Nick grinned, as her anxiety started to shift over to something more hopeful. "Night vision, cameras, the works. You should be able to see the shock and dismay on that sheep's face as if you were standing right next to him."

The problem, of course, was that Judy might not even be able to lift the heavy glass tool. Once they made the roof, Nick helped her get it set up right there on the ticking hood of the cruiser, so she could see over the concrete edge.

"You know, you're right," she said, as she twiddled a focus knob. "I'm looking right in that front window." She stepped away from the eyepiece, long enough to shoot him a little glance that made him feel things he wasn't supposed to feel in uniform.

"Nice to know it's coming in useful. I didn't think we were going to get to use it." Nick stepped up beside her, so all the dashcam would pick up was their feet, and those of the tripod. It wouldn't catch the way he put his muzzle alongside her cheek, or how he took the shutter trigger on its cable and pressed it into her paws.

Judy figured the control out quickly enough even without taking her eye from the scope, but Nick kept his fingers wrapped around hers, rubbing his thumbs against her soft fur. She didn't seem to mind.

Not even when she stiffened against him. "There he is."

"You've got him?" Nick dimly heard the radio crackle, as the perimeter team prepared to spring its trap.

"That's him. Oh, he's really going away this time."

Now _that_ felt good. No, they couldn't be there themselves - but this was cathartic for her in its own way. Nick enjoyed it, too, as Marki called the go and ZPD moved in. This chase was finally over.

"Make sure you get lots of pretty pictures," he murmured, and stayed where he was with her as the shutter started snapping. "Bellwether needs something nice to pin up in her cell."


	31. Tenacity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It drove the rest of the world out as he nuzzled her, locked the stresses and ambiguity away so they could have this moment together. Everything down there on street level was a complicated mess, compared to this thing they'd found together in a few short weeks. They were good at their jobs, yes - but they were good at other things, too, big and little. Being there for each other. Keeping green beans alive.
> 
> As shared points of pride went, it was a modest one - especially with everything else they did on a daily basis. But that didn't make it any less valid, any less worth celebrating. They had brought something from the literal dirt together, and Judy wouldn't trade that for anything.

It wasn't _farm_ early, but it was close. Judy could still feel the cool morning air in her ears up here, even with the sun now shining directly on the rooftop.

Everything else felt pretty farmlike, too - the scent of the fresh dirt, and the feel of it running through her fingers. There was even a packet of seeds floating in her vision.

She looked up. Nick was holding out a lumpy parchment-paper envelope with the words _green beans_ scribbled on it.

"Oh, good, you found them."

"Right where you said they'd be. And I brought the cream cheese." He stepped back to let her get to her feet.

Breakfast, as it usually was on weekends, was bagels from Moe's, eaten there on the roof. Judy brushed the worst of the soil off her paws and helped Nick separate the bagel halves.

"Will there be enough?" Nick asked.

"Cream cheese, or beans?"

"Beans."

"Should be just enough," Judy said. "This is fill for the second harvest, right? We don't need as many this time around."

Nick seemed to be counting the beans in the packet anyway. Judy let him doubt her. He was particular about his green beans. These seeds - and the young plants growing in a whole tray all to themselves now - were from the local farmers' market. They weren't her family's seeds, which she would have preferred, but they were way better than storebought. Close enough until she had time to go home and bring some back.

They'd had to expand to accommodate. Green bell peppers, cucumbers, chili peppers, new tomatoes, basil and dill in the corner, and now lots of green beans starting to come in. The rooftop garden was up to three trays, and they were considering adding a couple more. Now they were killing time building little scrap-wood planters for the plastic bins themselves, just so they looked nicer, and Judy was considering edging the lot with more perennials to bring more colors and pollinators around.

For now, though, they sat with their backs to the warming brickwork and munched on breakfast. They had time to take things slow.

"They'll take another month or so," Nick said. "The green beans."

"You're anxious."

"Just hungry." But his tail flipped in amusement. "You know I've wanted to try these ever since we started the garden. They're important to have if you're running one." He pointed. "Like tomatoes."

Judy had wondered, a couple times early on, if Nick had just been doing this to humor her, because it was an excuse to spend time together. The latter was definitely true - he wasn't going to deny that - but he'd also banished any possibility of the former in short order. Gardening was another thing he'd never had a chance to try before, and now he paid such careful attention to their progress. It had become a full-blown hobby for him, too. She'd make a real farmer of him yet.

She knelt next to him at the green bean tray and they went after the little weeds together. Up here, they were nothing serious, but they would compete with their cultivation for water and sunlight all the same.

They both ignored the spade, she noticed, and used their paws to pull out the interlopers and cover the batch of new seeds with dirt. Nick went to fill the watering can from the little tap in the corner.

As he was sprinkling the water in an even pattern over the furrow, Judy's phone rang. Both of them twitched their ears as they recognized the tone. That was an official contact. Judy brushed her paws again and dug it out of her pocket.

"It's the weekend, Fangmire," she muttered, and tapped receive. "Hello, Captain."

"Morning, Hopps. I'm assuming Wilde is with you."

Judy put him on speaker. Nick already had a patient smile at her apologetic expression. "Hey, Cap."

"Guess who Torren just found?"

He wouldn't call them on their days off unless it was Stern, their one lead in the cold case they'd been hammering on for two weeks. Judy put everything else on mental hold and started thinking about their progress again.

"A certain antelope."

"Figured you'd want to know we got an address that matches, finally. We'll have one of the second shift teams go out and bring him in. Unless you want it."

"No, go ahead and send them. We'll be along to the station soon."

"Suit yourself. It's your weekend."

"Our case, too. See you soon." She ended the call.

Nick scratched his muzzle. "What's Torren doing in on the weekend?"

The same thing they would be. She looked at his ears. "Sorry, Nick."

"No, it's okay. Quit it." They came back up, and he put a paw on her shoulder. "You're right and we both know it. We've been working on this one even longer than the rest of them. It's important. A llama got poisoned."

"Yeah, more than ten years ago."

But that gap didn't matter. Judy couldn't ignore the first big break of this case, any more than Nick or Torren or any of the others could. Now it would be cutting into their off time, because they both understood seeing these things through was as much a part of the job as anything else.

She decided their departure could wait, though - at least long enough to finish their watering.

\---

Four weeks later, they were almost done.

And while it wasn't the hardest case of their careers so far - that honor went to the Boots fiasco they'd just wrapped up - it had been the longest. Stern had given them leads to the golf course, and the homeowner's association, and a bar down in Meadowlands. It had led them to and old golfing buddy, and a neighbor of the deceased, and even through the offices of a real estate firm that had negotiated two different sales of the house where an old llama had died.

The question, as usual, was who to arrest. All of their suspects had been in contact with the food and drink Derek Harstein consumed the day he died. The toxicology results were all negative for the food. But in all that time, in all those years, nobody had thought to check the silverware itself for DNA traces.

They'd spent most of the time waiting on those forensics checks, each of them entering the back of the queue with every other unsolved death and assault and rape. It was slow going. They'd spent long nights - and more than a few unintentional weekend shifts away from their garden and their time together that was more important than ever - tenaciously chasing leads and checking results against every name on their list of possible suspects. Now, at long last, Judy and Nick had cleared them all, except for one. The long shot.

"I still don't believe it," she said again, in the cruiser as they pulled to a stop. "She sat through days of testimony and interview. ZPD cleared her, and then cleared her again for good measure."

"We weren't there to see it," Nick said. "We're taking the reports at their words, and those reports didn't have DNA evidence to match."

"Okay, but his wife? Really? After all that?"

_"Cherchez la femme,"_ Nick quoted. They started up the broad steps. Harstein's widow had moved to a nice part of town, where she now lived in a giant old house as a total recluse. "The girl always has something to do with it. There was insurance involved, right? Mammals have killed each other with poison-laced forks over less, I'm sure."

"You read too many detective stories."

"You and I might as well be detectives at this point." He smiled over at her. "Don't worry. We'll be through with this in no time."

They rang the bell - twice - and waited so long that Judy would have followed Nick back to the car had she not picked up the faint sounds of someone walking around inside.

"Wait. She's in there."

The door creaked, and a positively ancient-looking llama peered out at them from behind thick glasses.

"Oh, hello, officers. Can I help you?"

"Mariel Harstein?"

She looked at Judy. "That's right. What can I do for you?"

Judy held up the warrant paperwork. "We're here to take you into police custody, Ma'am. It's about your husband."

Harstein frowned in confusion. "But my husband died a decade ago."

"We know, Ma'am. The DA would like to ask you more questions."

Harstein blinked. "This is all very strange." She fumbled for the ornate handle and pulled the door wider. "Won't you come in? The tea is on. We can talk about it over refreshments."

"Ma'am-"

But she was gone, turning to take unsteady steps back into the house. They followed, and stared.

Widowing didn't appear to have been kind to Harstein. There was a grand hardwood staircase in the main entrance, an actual dead-trees library through the archway to the right, and a full multi-scale dining room table, set with silverware and glasses for a whole host of guests.

And it was all covered in a thick layer of dust. Judy could see it hazing in the sunbeams, shining in through the upper windows where the drapes didn't cover. Harstein was disappearing through that dining room, where her regular passage seemed to have cleared a path through the grime. Judy held her breath and followed.

Nick was unsettled, too, if his ears were any indication. "Ma'am, we have a warrant for your arrest. You need to come with us."

"There's a burner going," Harstein said over her shoulder. "I can't leave now."

Judy doubted Harstein ever left, actually. They'd done much of the research themselves - the llama got groceries delivered, once a week like clockwork. She tried again.

"Ma'am, we have DNA evidence that connects you very closely to the medical incident your husband suffered. You need to come with us, now."

"But before tea?" She was working an ancient copper kettle on a corner burner. She took it off the heat and poured into two intricate teacups that looked like they'd been there as long as anything else in the house.

"Put the cups down, Ma'am." Nick had a set of cuffs in his paws.

"But-" Harstein turned and came up short as Judy held up a paw to stop her. Her muzzle twisted in confusion. "It's the special batch."

For a taut moment Judy expected the llama was going to hurl the hot liquid in their faces. "The special batch?"

Nick swooped in at her hesitation, to pluck the cups from her hooves and set them on the table. Harstein's narrowed eyes followed them, but she didn't move. She licked her lips.

"You have the right to remain silent," Nick said. "Anything you say can and will-"

"You can't prove anything," Harstein said, in the same quavery voice. Judy nearly missed that she'd changed topics, except she looked more lucid than ever. "You never did."

Judy chilled a bit, and Nick's ears flicked back from where he was working behind the woman. Was that a tacit confession?

In any case, it wasn't their job to prove or disprove anything. The DNA tests did that. Nick finished cuffing her wrists behind her back, finished reading her her rights, and escorted her to the door.

She was silent in the secure seat the whole way back to headquarters, and Judy had time to dwell on the strangeness of it all. At 90 years old, and cooped up for the last ten in that house, Harstein clearly wasn't well. But she still seemed to know what she was accused of. Judy had to look away from the rearview mirror, where the llama's gaze might well have been boring a hole through the plexiglass.

They handed her over to booking and completed the necessary paperwork. Harstein looked healthy enough, but she would be up for a day of physical evaluation before the doctors deemed her fit to answer questions.

By noon they were leaving the office, back out into the sunlight in downtown. Judy paused outside the doors.

"That was surreal." Nick let her lead the way down the steps. "Top three, for sure."

Judy frowned. "Top three."

"Weird cases of the week, maybe the month. We definitely beat out Del Gato's call for that otter who put three cars upside down on birch. I think McHorn still wins, though."

"What did he get?"

"Misdemeanor dueling."

Judy felt her ears lifting despite herself. "No way."

"Way." Nick grinned. "Never go to the Meadowlands after the Clovers win a title. It gets _weird_."

He was trying to cheer her up. He'd been sticking a little closer than normal ever since they'd served the warrant, even now as they rode the train back toward her apartment. As they made it to her floor and the quiet hallway, he closed the distance. They'd learned how to do this, and how important it was now.

"You okay, sweetheart?"

"You're right," Judy said. She leaned into where Nick had spared his nose for her ears, even as they walked. "It is weird. And uncomfortable. That poor woman."

"The social workers didn't know. None of us did."

"I think she knows. About what she did. If the DNA match is right, and it should be, they're really hard to get wrong these days..."

Nick just squeezed her closer. They stood outside her apartment door.

"Here, or up?" he asked.

He knew just what she needed. "Let's go up."

\---

There were brick walls on three sides, but the rooftop was exposed to the vast sky, and afforded good views of the apartments and commercial buildings to the north. They could even see the spires of downtown from here, looming behind the rowhouses across the street.

And they still managed to make that wide open space a private one, full of just themselves. Their peppers and tomatoes climbed the trellises now, hiding them from view if they stuck close enough, and Nick was taking full advantage. He sat on the sun-warmed concrete of the roof and pulled her all the way into his lap.

"You're okay, too," Judy murmured into his muzzle.

"I am. We did our jobs. And I'm no psychologist, but Harstein might have needed that little intervention."

He didn't say anything about how it would likely land her in prison on a murder conviction, too. But he wouldn't introduce that stress. For now, they could both step back.

She followed his gaze. There were persistent weeds in among the crops again to address, and the beans themselves were looking ripe indeed. It would be just a couple more days.

They cleaned the pricklies out, and Nick helped her transplant a new violet blossom that had germinated in among the beans somehow. She held the ambitious little thing in her cupped paws while he dug it a new spot.

"We should get little clay pots," she said. "For when adventurers like this one show up. It could go on our desk."

"Maybe." Nick's eyes twinkled. "We'd end up with a garden at work, too."

"Not so bad," Judy said. She watched him tend to the green beans with careful paws. "We've made this one work so well."

He knew how important it was, this rooftop pressure valve for the rigors of their work. And he was good at distilling it to the important words, too.

"I love you."

Judy felt the blood thrumming in her ears. She didn't doubt him for a second when he said it - but no one had ever said it to her before. Not like this. She hoped it always gave her that rush.

And it drove the rest of the world out as he nuzzled her, locked the stresses and ambiguity away so they could have this moment together. Everything down there on street level was a complicated mess, compared to this thing they'd found together in a few short weeks. They were good at their jobs, yes - but they were good at other things, too, big and little. Being there for each other. Keeping green beans alive.

As shared points of pride went, it was a modest one - especially with everything else they did on a daily basis. But that didn't make it any less valid, any less worth celebrating. They had brought something from the literal dirt together, and Judy wouldn't trade that for anything.

She stood astride his knees so she could kiss him back, even as she trailed dirt into the fur of his neck. "And I love _you_. You know what we need now."

"Patio furniture."

Judy stared. "What?"

Nick jerked a thumb behind them. "For up here. So we don't have to sit on the cement in the mornings. A table and a couple chairs, nothing fancy."

She played with the new notch in his ear. "I was going to say pasta." She indicated the green beans. "These will be ready by the weekend." As if he wasn't keeping even closer count than she was.

"Spaghetti," he suggested.

"I think so. Whole grain, from Hearthseed. They make it themselves there. And garlic and lemon, too."

"You know I've never been this excited for vegetables, ever." Nick had his gentle claws against her. He looked down at their garden. "I'm going to miss you, green beans."

"There will be more in a month or so." Judy pointed to the shoots of the second batch. "And more and more. That's the nice thing about a garden. You keep at it, and it will keep coming back for you."


	32. Sleep it off [Thematic Thursday 01.19]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Thematic Thursday on /trash/.

Nick was the one bedridden - but Judy thought she might be sick anyway.

His breathing was shallow and rhythmic, like he was focusing on keeping it steady. Every so often he would stop, long enough to swallow hard - and it was making her own stomach swim.

"I'm sorry about the smell, sweetheart."

"It's not your fault," he said. "Stop worrying about me. You need to eat, too."

It was mild, as scents went. Appetizing, even. They'd been slicing up chives and green peppers to go in the night's salad, until Nick had had to stop and crawl into bed. Judy had put everything in the fridge, but her apartment still smelled of their missed dinner.

She'd only ever had migraines a couple of times. And scents had never been the thing to make them worse. For her it was sound. But she remembered enough of the experiences to know that the cresting headache was singularly, ferociously painful - and that the nausea that came with it was just as bad, in its own way.

And she hazarded that was what they were both worried about right now: him that he might be sick, and her - that he might be sick. It was bad enough that she tended to hear everything, but it would be even worse because it would be Nick suffering through it. She didn't want to listen to that.

But she could hardly leave him to something so uncomfortable and frightening himself. Not when there was something she still might do for him. And there had to be something.

Now he was squeezing her paws like she was an anchor, so hard his own were shaking. The tension went all the way through his shoulders and neck.

She'd killed all the lights, but she couldn't do anything about the bright evening cityscape out the window. Her neighbors were blessedly absent for the night, but now that she and Nick were being quiet, every little sound jumped out at her.

She'd put a cool cloth over his eyes as a blindfold, too. But that was about everything she could do to help. It was too late for painkillers; he said it had come on too fast.

All that was left was to sit here and hold his paws, and rack her brain for the stresses that might have triggered this. They never brought paperwork home if they could help it, so that probably wasn't it. Were they getting enough sleep? How much water had Nick been drinking?

"Your bed smells like you," he said, out of nowhere.

"Sorry."

"No, it's good." Nick's chest rose and fell in a deep breath. "That's about the one thing that doesn't make me want to puke right now, so thank you."

"Shhh." He was slowly relaxing under her efforts. She put a careful paw against his neck and felt his pulse faster than usual. He swallowed. "You're doing okay. How's your cloth?"

"Good."

"Are you too hot? Too cold?"

"Fine."

"I could make a warm compress. There's more towels in the bathroom."

"Uh-uh." Nick grimaced under his blindfold, and breathed hard through his nose. Judy heard his legs sliding up under the thin sheet. "Is the trash can there?"

_Oh, Nick._ Now her own stomach turned. It took more guts than she wanted, to stay where she was. "Right here. Do you need it, sweetheart?"

"No, it's-" He let his head drop further back against the pillow. "It's okay." He swallowed again. "I just need time."

His paws were curling into fists again. Judy unstuck her own claws from the bedsheets and set about chasing the tension away, minute by slow minute, and got Nick to relax again.

This was so frustrating. Judy fixed things. She addressed problems until they weren't problems anymore. But Nick was trapped in his own head with the pain, and there was only so much she could do. She had made him as comfortable as she could. She had stayed with him, she hoped through the worst of it. Sympathy felt like a poor substitute for getting closer to him, but she couldn't risk it while just about everything made the pain and nausea worse.

Eventually Nick's breathing evened out - not deep, not slow, but it sounded less mechanical now. Hopefully he was dozing.

And if he really was asleep, she ought to leave him to it. Get out of his fur. She could go and think up some other way to help. She had the medical training; maybe she was missing something.

Or maybe there was someone with even more expertise who might have some ideas.

Judy crossed to the door, taking care to step over the creakiest plank on the left side of the entrance. There was no way to cut out the yellow light spilling in from the hallway, so she squeezed through the door as fast as she could, with one last glance back at Nick. He wasn't reacting to the brightness. That was good, probably.

She got some distance from her door, so she was closer to the stairs at the end of the hallway, and pulled out her phone.

"Jude!" Her sister Sharon answered the video call on the third ring. There were lots of filing cabinets and computer screens behind her. Judy hoped she hadn't interrupted something important at the hospital - but then, Sharon wouldn't have answered unless she had the time. "What's up?"

"Nick is sick." She slid down to sit against the wooden banisters. "Help. You're the best nurse I know."

"Oh no. What is it?"

"A migraine. Headache, nausea, everything." Judy outlined what happened and the help she'd tried to give him.

Sharon had propped her phone up so she could tap at a computer on her desk. "They're not common?"

"No. He says they're a once-every-few-years kind of thing."

"Best thing he can do in that case is get painkillers and water ASAP." Sharon shrugged and gave Judy a sad smile. "Sucks that it came on so fast. Is he sleeping?"

"I hope so." Judy looked back toward her apartment. "I left him alone."

"He'll be fine, Jude." Sharon tilted her head at the camera.

"I've just never seen him laid out like this, without being able to do anything about it. I know how these things feel. I'm getting secondpaw nausea here."

"You did a lot," Sharon said. "And you're letting him rest. Sometimes that's the best thing you can do. Nick will appreciate that."

"Yeah."

"And you can always give him a big hug afterward."

Leave it to Sharon to cheer her up a bit. Judy nodded. "Sorry to call you up just to vent."

"It's fine. Beats this paperwork."

"You, too, huh?"

Sharon angled her camera to show a stack of manila folders in the out bin. "No escaping it."

"I'll let you get back to it, then," Judy said. At least she and Nick didn't have any of that to worry about tonight. She would have done it so he didn't have to, and that would have bugged him.

"Give Nick my sympathies." Sharon waved. "I'll come say hello when I can. There's a conference I'm supposed to attend in a couple of months."

"Keep me posted," Judy said.

And so she puttered, to give Nick as much time as she could. No, there was no paperwork. And there was nothing to do in the garden this time of year.

She wound up in the little lobby downstairs. Mammals came and went. Mrs. Reagan waved from her apartment door, on her own way in for dinner. Judy could smell whatever it was, and it seemed her stomach was finally settled enough to growl. She hadn't eaten since breakfast, now. But she had to wait it out, for Nick's sake. Some things were more important than dinner.

So she dragged it out for almost an hour and a half, sitting on an oversize chair and paging through idle nothing on her phone until her battery ran down.

Nick was still asleep when she came back, right where she'd left him. At least he was breathing more deeply.

She curled up on his couch - about as close as she could get to him without disturbing him - and settled in to wait.

\---

The stress had pulled on her, apparently, because Judy didn't stir again until there was weight sinking onto the cushion beside her. She raised her head and blinked in the dark of the nighttime apartment.

Nick was wrapped in her comforter. He'd pulled it off her bed and over his head like a hood. He smiled at her, but his eyes were still a little dull with pain. His movements were slow and careful.

"Nick." She pushed under his chin. "Are you feeling better?"

"Getting there." Nick's whisper was hoarse; he cleared his throat and tried again. "Head is just splitting instead of overwhelming. I'm glad it's dark out now."

Judy wished, for maybe the first time ever, that she was sized to be big spoon. She wanted to wrap around Nick and keep him safe right now, but all she could ever get was one of his paws. It would have to do.

"Stomach okay?"

"Mostly," he said.

"Do you want something to eat? We missed dinner."

He moved his head against her. "You didn't eat?"

She looked up at him. "I wasn't going to do that to you. You needed time."

He grumbled and pulled her closer. "Carrots..."

"I couldn't make you sick," Judy persisted. "I couldn't make it worse." She didn't know if he'd noticed the way she'd reacted, when his nausea had peaked. But that had been bugging her, too. "And call me selfish, but I can't listen to other mammals be sick, either."

Nick sighed and rearranged his muzzle over her head. "You and me both. Okay. Thanks, I guess."

"I can bring us breakfast tomorrow," she said. "Do you want bagels? Or Moe's does smoothies and juices, too."

"Don't worry about me right now," he murmured, and eased further back against the couch cushions. "I kind of want to get over this before I think about it anyway."

She did let him go eventually, because she did too _worry_ about him: Now that he was feeling better she wanted to get at least something in him, even if it was just water.

Nick accepted the glass and sipped at it. Judy kept an ear on him and made their bed while he drank. He'd pulled the comforter, so she straightened the pillows and sheets so they would be ready. The couch wasn't bad, but she wanted Nick to get the best sleep possible.

They climbed into bed and Judy shimmied higher against him, so her snout lay over the top of his instead of in the hollow of his neck where she usually slept. He'd said her presence in the bed had helped before. Maybe this would help, too.

It meant his tired eyes were closer than usual, where he was watching her. Judy planted a gentle kiss between them as he closed them.

"I'm sorry I freaked out this whole time."

"Mm." He was already drifting. "I hadn't noticed."

He really was too good to her. Judy settled down around him, careful not to shift their shared pillow while she did it.

Yes, he still needed his rest. And yes, she could give him that, no matter how hungry she got. Nick was right. She should just leave it for when he was feeling better.

Now she just hoped her stomach wouldn't start growling.


	33. As the Stars go out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wasn't often that promises made Nick uncomfortable. There were difficult ones, yes, but they had always been about affirmation and trust. He made them with good intentions, and took them seriously. And he had promised so many mammals in Judy's life that he would look out for her. 
> 
> But she was losing the ones closest to her. Did he really have any ground to stand on?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a follow-on piece to the short story [On the Train Home Again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6727384/chapters/15740518), which I recommend reading first to get the most impact. If you'd like even more feels, read [Judy Visits Nick's mom](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6727384/chapters/15504805), too.

These sorts of calls weren't supposed to come in on a Monday. Mondays were for work, for settling into the weekly routine, maybe for planning meals for the next few days.

They weren't for hasty messages from parents, for learning that yet another corner of childhood was starting to collapse. Judy stared at the words and willed them to change, before Nick could catch on from where he was lounging next to her on the couch.

But her parents would call eventually. They'd be calling everyone, now that Grandpa Andrew was getting hospice visits. And then there would be no hiding that from him.

No, this was going to be rough on him without her being coy, or trying to deal with it herself. They had made a habit of absorbing this sort of personal news together, from the very start. Now they got more practice than either of them wanted.

Now this evening, too - open as it had been, for dinner or maybe for one of the few movies they liked to put on as background noise - was skidding away. Nick was already noticing, as it turned out. She could see it in his ears.

So Judy put her phone down, to face this head-on with him.

"My Grandpa Andrew is getting home care. My Dad's dad."

Everything about him wilted, all the way down to the tip of his tail. "Carrots."

She met him halfway, and pulled on his solid, reassuring warmth. She took a lot from the way his paws always circled her, and his tail. But there was something extra to it in these fragile moments, too. He had never stopped trying to protect her, even from the things that neither of them could control.

It was true, now that she'd said it, and Judy felt the emotion rising up to claw at her again. it would be five now, just like last time. Five people, five constant presences, five of the ones Judy had though were invincible as a kit, gone in these few months.

"Mom and Dad don't know how long he has," she said against his throat.

Nick didn't speak. His claws just tightened. _I'm here._

It took a while. The sun was fading fast outside, leaving her apartment dim, but Judy was safe in his arms and that never changed. It helped her master that crest of pain and imminent loss that was as raw as ever. The fur of his chest was soft and soothing against her cheek, enough that she eventually felt she'd be able to talk without her voice breaking.

She only mostly suceeded. "You never signed up for this, did you?"

"It's important." Nick had told her how her family had become like his family now, even when they were coming together for grief. And there was no hiding how he was taking these harder and harder, just like she was. The pain in his expression was magnified, when she was this close to him. "There are always hard parts."

"Dad's going to call soon," Judy said.

He nodded against her. "Do you want some time?"

"Some." She pulled tighter. He was too good to her. "And I should talk with him about travel. We should be able to get tickets for tomorrow."

Nick sighed softly. That pain flickered and sharpened. "Sweetheart, all you have left is sick leave."

It took a few beats for that to sink in. Nick had worried about this aloud before, hadn't he? That last tired night they'd stumbled in late from Bunnyburrow, and gone to sleep right on this very couch. He'd wrapped her up then, too, because it had been hard for both of them to talk about how they couldn't keep doing this.

Now it was all coming back.

"Nick, I have to."

"Carrots-"

"He's my _family._ " Judy pushed enough distance between them to look him squarely in the eye. The night apartment blinked back into existence behind him. "He might- might be gone tomorrow. I can't stay here."

Nick let her go, and stayed where he was on the edge of the couch. The stability was gone again, now that Judy was standing on her own. But the hot denial buoyed her over the sadness. He had to understand.

"Carrots." Nick's mouth closed, then opened.

"I _can't,_ " Judy repeated, slower. "I know what this is. Don't."

He leaned forward. "All I'm asking is that you think carefully."

"About how my grandfather is dying?" Judy rounded on him.

"If you don't have that time when you need it-"

"I _know!_ " She waved a paw toward the battered officer manual over on her desk. "Nick, I know. Probation hearings. Suspension. You warned me last time. But what else am I supposed to do?"

He sat, silent. Judy pawed at the moisture on her cheeks.

They made amazing progress every time they went to her childhood home together. Judy loved every single moment, every single experience they had learned to share there. But Nick still had a lot to learn about rabbit families. it would take him a lifetime to absorb all of the things that were important, every little bond and link and the fierceness they burned with. Rabbits lived fast and hard, and they took what they could get.

Judy, in the city, had stepped away from some of it. And she had learned the hard way what that meant, about the parts of her life she hadn't ever considered she might not be ready to leave behind.

She still didn't want to. Not when she might only have days to ever talk to Grandpa Andrew again.

And right now, Nick looked like he might be recognizing that, too. Judy could see him biting down on the reminder, the perspective, the _you can't be there for all of them._

"I just want you to stay safe, Carrots," he said instead. "Healthy."

"I've never taken a sick day," Judy shot back.

"Yet."

"Nick, stop this. Please."

"Sweetheart, these aren't things you can see coming. It's a safety net."

"You can stay here," she ground out. Her claws dug into her palm, in her free paw that wasn't already holding the phone. "I'm not asking you to do this with me. You don't have to come."

He shook his head, hard. "I know you don't want to be alone for this. Don't make this about me. Judy-" Nick dithered, and his ears flattened. "I told Tams I'd look out for you. I told Sharon. And your parents."

Judy flared. Of course. Of _course_ he'd promised. The bitterness rolled through her, and then the bone-deep guilt stacked on top of everything-

And her phone buzzed in her paw. They both looked.

It all started to crack. The tears were coming freely now, faster than she could clear them away, faster than she could think about what she was saying.

"So it's inviolate, right?" Her thumb hovered over the answer pad, and the portrait of her father's smiling face. "It fixes everything, because you _promised._ Why don't we bunnies think of that? I should just promise Grandpa Andrew that he'll live forever."

"Judy-"

"I need to talk to my dad. Go." She pointed at the door with her phone, and when Nick was slow to get to his feet: _"Go!"_

\---

Nick had only seen the night sky outside the city a few times in his adult life. They'd all been with Judy, on her family's farm, where it was so dark that constellations got lost in all the other stars.

Now, he sat at the new table in their garden and wished he could see them from here. Even if he turned off the strings of tiny lights they hung through the greenery on the trellises, or the ones Judy had piled in the big mason jar at the center of the table, he wouldn't be able to make out much of the expanse. The rest of the urban sprawl saw to that.

So instead he let his eyes slide out of focus and stared at the lights in the jar, and pretended those were the stars.

It wasn't often that promises made Nick uncomfortable. There were difficult ones, yes, but they had always been about affirmation and trust. He made them with good intentions, and took them seriously. And he had promised so many mammals in Judy's life that he would look out for her.

But he'd said it himself, back inside. This wasn't about him, no matter how important it was to him that she stay healthy. This wasn't the same as an exasperated Judy explaining for the umpteenth time that he was being protective again. It wasn't even the rigors of an occasionally dangerous job, that they both had to be ready and willing to face, even when it was hard.

Judy was losing the ones closest to her. If she wanted to go - even if it meant pushing that line, that risk - did he really have any ground to stand on? Nick could want what was best for her, and give her every bit of help and support and love that she ever asked for.

But even when her life seemed very fast and short and small, like a whole sky full of stars crammed into a jar, winking out one by one-

It was her life to live.

His phone was on the table. Judy might call, when she could - or when she was ready to talk to him again. Or she might come be with him. She'd know where he was.

He grabbed it and skimmed over to the ZPD staff portal, just in case. But it showed in black and white on their pay stubs there, too: Judy wouldn't have more PTO until three weeks from now, when the paycheck after next ticked over. He was almost out of hours himself, from going with her.

If she wanted to leave tomorrow, Nick knew he couldn't stop her. He was ready to help her get on her way, and he might even commit that last bit of his free time and go with her. The Tuesday morning time slots were still available on ZTA's fares website, if she needed them.

But buying those tickets had to be her decision. Nick had to stare at the shopping cart icon and wrestle with that, even now.

In the end, he only let himself do the next best thing.

He'd pocketed his phone and sat back in the chair to try to see the sky again when the roof access door clicked.

"Nick?"

Her ears were down. She moved slowly. She was slight against him when she came up - but she did come up. Nick let her clamber onto his lap, and hugged her close.

It was almost perfect. Judy melted against him, the way that always made his heart warm and made him nearly forget the times they didn't see eye to eye. It hadn't been the first time they'd pushed each other away, and it wouldn't be the last. But this still worked. This always worked.

And so he kept his paws on her shoulders and her cheeks, and held her up until she was ready to talk.

"Dad helped," she said, and sniffed. "Made me slow down."

Nick pulled his eyes from the twinkling points amid the leaves and looked down at her. The edge of her ear twitched under the press of his muzzle.

"I was wrong to say those things," Judy said. She looked up, searching for eye contact. Her brow was furrowed. "All you ever do is help me. I know how important it is to you, and I threw it in your face."

"You've got a point, Carrots. There are some things I just can't promise, much as I'd like to. That's not always helpful."

She shook her head. "You do it because of me. Dad shouldn't have to remind me of that."

"Because I love you, yes." Nick could feel her breath against his throat. He eased them deeper into the chair, and pulled her feet up so she was curled in his lap properly. "But I can't stop everything for you, and you know that's always been hard for me to remember."

"Yes." It sounded like she wanted to laugh. Nick tightened up.

"This isn't about proving a point," he said. "I don't ever want you to think that."

"I know, Nick."

"I'm sorry."

"I love you."

Judy had hold of his forearms, like she was afraid he was going to go somewhere. The lights of their garden were shining in her eyes. She'd been crying. Nick reached up and brushed at those unshed tears. She leaned against him and let him work - but her deep breath was shaky.

"My dad cries a lot," she said. "Did you know that? He even cried at _your_ graduation."

Nick sighed against her ears. "No."

"He's not now. Even with Grandpa and mom there with him, he just looks scared, and so lost..."

Now Judy's shoulders rocked, and all Nick could do was hold onto her. There was something odd, to wanting to be closer to what she was feeling. Nick hadn't had to experience this himself in decades. It couldn't be as sharp for him.

But it was still enough to make his heart hurt - just as much as the happiness and love they found together did. He _had_ signed up for this, in a way. To be there for and with Judy, and to hold her up and get held up, no matter what happened.

"He told me to stay," Judy murmured. "He told me to come find you, and to hold onto you for as long as it took."

Even if that meant that by the time they arrived, her grandfather was gone.

Neither of them could stop that knowledge, but Nick was going to try anyway. For as long as it took.

He wrapped around her, to share that weight on her shoulders that he knew all too well, and to let her cry and keep her warm against the mild chill of the rooftop at night. They stayed there as the city went to sleep around them, until the brightest light nearby was the glow of their garden, the twinkling points on the table.

Nick's phone vibrated in his pocket, as ZTA delivered two tickets to Bunnyburrow for the 5PM train on Friday.

He left it alone.


	34. Chocolate Covered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She and Nick had both agreed. Nothing special. Not when it felt like some kind of obligation.
> 
> Judy had ordered in a tiny box of the nice triple-dark chocolate-covered blueberries anyway. They were for her, so they didn't count. So what if she felt like sharing?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Valentine's drabbles, for /trash/. Probably some typos left in here because of how fast I spun this out. I'll clean it up when I can.

Judy hadn't had reason to celebrate Valentine's day since elementary school - and she didn't intend to start going along with the breathless commercial romance of the day now, even if things were different.

Neither of them went in for flowers or soppy cards, not when just spending time with each other was enough. Even when they got whole days of foot patrol, doing nothing more exciting than ticketing cars and unsticking stuck kites, they made it special. That's how they'd met, after all: adventures through these same city blocks. How better to commemorate their relationship?

And so she and Nick had both agreed. Nothing special. Not when it felt like some kind of obligation.

Judy had ordered in a tiny box of the nice triple-dark chocolate-covered blueberries anyway. They were for her, so they didn't count. So what if she felt like sharing?

\---

And Nick hadn't caught on, even when they'd come in that afternoon via rush courier. He'd been so busy with the same paperwork she was, on the other side of the cubicle. He'd just glanced at the three-inch square box, and gone to refill their coffee. It was the first time he'd left his desk since this morning, when they'd arrived at six. His focus was as sharp as hers. It was unusual.

It was probably a matter of necessity. Three days, they'd been working on the obscure finances, and they were still only halfway done. The deadline was tomorrow at noon. And judging by the stack of binders that was still on the edge of her desk, blocking her view of the blueberry box, Judy thought they might not be getting out of here on time tonight.

So she wasn't all that interested in what he had to propose when he came back.

"Lunch?"

"The coffee is lunch," she said, and accepted hers back to drink. "We don't really have time to eat. It can wait."

"Something fast, then," Nick persisted. "If all you have is coffee, you'll crash in a couple hours. Come on, we both need food."

"Nick, we're going to be late here anyway."

"That makes it all the more important." Nick crouched to be at her eye level. "We can bring it back, if you want."

He was doing that thing with his ears, the thing that meant he was going to be as stubborn about looking out for her as she was about getting the work done. And try as she might, Judy could never shake him of that. She hoped her indignance was getting through, then.

"There's a salad place at the end of the square. Sunfield."

"Sounds perfect," Nick said.

Judy insisted on taking the law references back to the stacks and reshelving them before they left, and then she grabbed the tiny box of blueberries off the desk and jammed it in her belt. Maybe this would be the one time today she'd get a chance to surprise him.

\---

They picked out salads from the restaurant's pre-made chiller. Nick looked at her funny when she was so perfunctory about it, but he'd held his tongue until they were back out in the cool afternoon sunshine.

"You okay?"

"I just want to get this done," she said. "I still have four binders of tax history to wade through."

"'96 through '99?"

"Yeah, the ones with the weird holes. I was saving the best for last."

"Those are done."

Judy blinked. "I didn't even crack them yet."

"I did," Nick said. He looked entirely too pleased with himself. "This morning."

"What?"

"Yeah, and all of them before then, and the nonprofit histories."

She stopped on the sidewalk and stared up at him. "Nick, that's all of it."

His grin was leaking into his tail. "Was it? Then I guess that's... it."

_It. All of it._ It had to be a good 48 mammal-hours of research and paperwork. "You."

"Well, you helped."

Judy couldn't decide if she wanted her ears up or down. "Are you serious?"

"You know, I thought you'd be happier." Nick balanced his salad in one paw and dug out his service phone. "Yep. See?" He showed her the dashboard tool ZPD used to track the endless paperwork, and the little green checkbox under _filed_ next to the case number.

She would have hugged him, if she hadn't risked dropping her salad. She debated kissing him anyway, right there in full view of every single mammal out here for their romantic holiday lunches. She settled for reaching up and pulling on his tie, so he had to bend at the waist down to see her.

"You finished all of our paperwork. Signed and delivered. A good day ahead of schedule."

His mouth hung open before he answered. "Yes."

_"When?"_

"The last of it? When you went to file the rulebooks."

Judy held onto his tie and glared at him. "We said we weren't going to do this."

"Do what?" Nick protested. "We always have paperwork. It's our job. Can you blame me for being fast at it this once?"

"I love you," she murmured, so only he could hear. "And no, I can't." She pulled the blueberry box off her belt.

"What's this?"

"Dessert."

He studied the label. "Carrots-"

"Blueberries, actually. And I have decided to share."

Now Nick was matching her scowl. She could tell he was faking it, because his tail was going a million miles an hour. "How _convenient._ "

"Can you blame me?"

"It's a good thing I did all our paperwork," he said, and straightened. There was something new in his eyes. "Because I think we need to get home."

\---

Their salads were stuffed hastily in Nick's fridge. Their dessert lay unopened and forgotten on the bedside table until afterward.

Now Nick lay with his snout along her naked front, so his nose almost met hers when Judy looked down at him. She felt his claws moving against her.

"Now, your penance," he murmured. His jaw didn't move. "You must help me eat the blueberries."

"Fine." Judy giggled and fumbled for the box. "There aren't many here. I think this is a sampler. If you like them we can get more."

"I love you."

She paused in her unwrapping to reach down and stroke his ears. "How did you do it?"

"The paperwork?"

"Mm-hm."

"I really wanted to get this to work." He reached up to unbuckle the coppery ring around his snout. "I did most of what we had left, and called in a couple favors for the rest."

_Paperwork favors._ It was the sort of thing they'd always reserved for foulups where someone at risk of losing their job.

And yet there it was, justified. It had netted them just a little time to themselves, that wasn't planned or scheduled out or even anticipated.

She held a blueberry out for him, at the tip of his nose. He sniffed at it and took it between careful teeth. She watched his eyes flutter closed.

"Good?"

"How do they keep them fresh?"

"They don't store well, I don't think." Judy ate one herself. The chocolate coating was like silk, and the fruit nearly melted in her mouth, too. "They prepare them fast and ship them right out."

"You have good taste."

Judy tapped her chin over his snout. "I'm sorry for breaking the rules."

"We're both terrible at keeping secrets, still," Nick said. "That's probably for the best."

"We'll do something this weekend. That we both know about."

He watched her. "Okay. Except for Sunday morning. Francine needs help with a bunch of research in the old physical records, for some reason."

"I suppose I'd better help, too," Judy muttered. "Was it worth it?"

Nick's breath was warm chocolate. He moved over her, and she shivered.

"Every bit."


	35. Late for Work

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stayed up late last night writing this for the Oscars win.

The second alarm didn't drag Nick out of bed. Or the third. It took Judy for that, in a burst of sudden motion under his chin that clicked his teeth together. It was very effective.

"Nick, we're _late._ "

He made sure she wasn't going to tip him over the edge of the mattress in her haste, and checked his watch.

"By like five minutes."

Her feet pattered on the apartment floorboards. "You know how the trains are. Do you want to chase them again?"

No, he really didn't. So he dragged himself out of bed, let her take the tiny water closet of a bathroom so she could scrub her face in front of the chipped sink, and went looking for clothes. He had a full service uniform here, folded in a neat stack on the couch. He stared at it.

"Where did this come from?" he called.

"You brought it last night, before we left."

"I don't remember that." Nick racked his brain. He didn't remember anything, actually. Not getting to her apartment, not getting into bed, not falling asleep in a tangle of chaste limbs. It was all a happy blur, after the awards ceremony and the after party where they'd all been glowing with energy and camaraderie. "How much did I drink?"

"I think Clawhauser made us count. You can ask him when you get in." Judy stepped back out into the room, with her suit halfway on at her waist. "Get dressed, come on."

Mildly Hung Over Nick decided he liked Sober Nick, because Sober Nick even made sure his badge was in the right spot. He dressed as quickly as he could.

Judy snugged her stab vest into place.

"Do you remember much?" he asked.

"The cheering. Francine nearly making me go deaf." Judy stopped where she was, to look him up and down. A smile danced on her muzzle. "I think I kissed you."

"Oh." The department knew. They knew, and Del Gato and Wolford especially gave Nick endless ribbing for it. But some things were worth it. "I hope drunk me is a good kisser."

"Well, I did it again," Judy said. "And again. So it can't have been all bad."

" _You_ get to deal with Del Gato," Nick said.

She beamed up at him - _I love you_ \- turned to leave-

-And came up short at the two crumpled dress uniforms, in piles at the threshold.

"Oh, no."

_"Trains,"_ Nick said.

"Nick, we can't just leave them."

"The trains will."

She bent to collect them anyway. They must have been pretty far gone, to leave their dress blues where they'd fallen. There were some things Judy Hopps just did not do.

She made for the couch, to lay them out and fuss with the seams and epaulets. Nick held the door.

"Carrots..."

"Your belt."

"We'll fix it later."

She glared. There wasn't as much to it as he knew she would have wanted. But she stayed, too. Nick had to cross the room and pick her up. She squeaked.

_"Nick!"_

"We'll fix it." He bore her out into the hallway, pulled the door shut behind them, and turned to hoist her up against it with his paws under her rump. "I'll even do the ironing."

"You hate ironing."

"Fine." He kissed her back for last night, fast. They had a train to run after. "You can help."


	36. One Year, we Think

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wanted to do something for the one-year anniversary of the film's U.S. release. Fair warning, this is self-referential to the point of being obnoxious. It even mentions a thing or two I haven't gotten around to publishing yet.
> 
> [Chronologically compliant](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yPmpmdo39SmiRNC4BJVv2PAWi7fxBoP5FWba9n8s3qg/edit).

Nick had no idea what time it was when they came out of the studio, into the bright afternoon light of downtown.

It had gone quickly. Their interviewers had kept the discussion brisk, probably out of concern for their time slot. Nick and Judy were given just enough time to marshal their thoughts and answer the question, and it was on to the next one. Nick had liked the snappy pace, even if the content was safe-for-primetime softball. It reminded him of the hustling days.

Judy wasn't much better at on-camera work now, either - especially with the expectations that came with a taped segment. She hadn't been totally at ease with the tiny chair they'd give her to sit in. It was perfectly scaled - they'd just put it on a box, so she'd been at eye level with Nick.

But then she would rather be working, no matter the circumstances. Time out of their schedule, she'd frequently reminded him ahead of this show, was just going to put them behind on their cases.

Now that it was over, Nick watched her comb claws over her ears to reverse whatever the set assistants had done with their brushes, and check her phone. "One-thirty. We're not too deep in the hole, then."

"You know Bogo said we could take whatever time we needed. Want to grab lunch?"

"Whatever time _they_ needed." Judy led the way down into the plaza. "And they're done with us."

Savanna Central was in full early-spring swing, with weather so temperate and warm that the transit authority had already broken out the open-air trolleys. They tagged onto the tail end of a nearly full car and sat in the rear-facing seats to watch the city go by.

It was just one stop back to precinct HQ, but there was a lot to see in that time: whole herds of mammals out for lunch or business or just to enjoy the weather, the lush greenery and fountains of the plaza, and the big afternoon train flickering behind the buildings in the historic quarter, on approach to Central Station.

Nick's nose twitched as they passed a food truck parked in the shade of one of the acacia trees. He could smell pretzels.

"Are you sure you're not hungry?" he asked.

"I am," Judy said. Her ears followed the truck, too, and she got a faint smile. "Just not hungry enough to stay late, if we can help it."

"Dinner it is," Nick said.

 _"No daydreaming."_ Her elbow jabbed him in the side. "I need your help with these scene reports."

"You'll get it, Carrots. You'll get it."

They made their way up the broad steps at headquarters and back to their desks. Judy leapt into her boosted chair with practiced ease, looking much more comfortable already.

They made good progress - half a binder, before Bogo came to check on them.

"They done prodding you for the day, Hopps?"

"Yes, Chief," Judy said. "We're almost caught up."

"City Hall had better stay happy for another year or so, then," Bogo said. "Unless they want to start filling in for you. If they keep bugging you, send them to me."

Now Nick hoped the obnoxious diversity committee reps would call back. "With perverse pleasure, boss."

He tossed his big horns in acknowledgement as he left. "And don't stay too late."

"If only it was just every year or so," Judy muttered. She had one paw on her chin, and she was bouncing her pen on top of the binder. "We've lost enough time to these retrospective pieces already."

"Not our problem anymore." Nick got to his feet. "I'm getting more coffee to power through this. Want some?"

"Half-caf. Thanks."

Nick couldn't remember exactly what the terms of their special interview had been - _go here, answer this, it will play well with with the government's initiatives, yadda yadda._ But now that Bogo had brought it up, he couldn't come up with a special reason for the timing. It would be published in a couple weeks, but the second anniversary of the Bellwether case was still about three months out. They hadn't said anything about his first year with the force, eventful as it had been.

There was one possibility, he realized, but he dismissed it almost immediately. Neither he nor Judy shared their personal lives. They didn't want to, and they had what was nearly a mandate from Bogo to leave it alone. Who you dated stayed home - especially in Nick and Judy's case. It had nearly bitten them more than once.

But it was about right, wasn't it? Now he wasn't sure.

To be fair to both of them, it had been a whirlwind, up and down, faster than any TV interview. They'd kept up. Their work had driven some of it by necessity, and when they'd both realized what was there and how important it was, they'd taken special care to strengthen it themselves. To find the time and boundaries and compromise and attention they both needed.

That was probably why it was hard to pin down, Nick decided, as he brought their coffee back. It was such a process.

But the more Nick thought about it, the more he realized they both deserved to figure it out. He stopped at the entrance to their cube, and watched his partner's ears shift their focus from paperwork to coffee. Judy looked up at him and smiled. He held her mug out.

"I know what we should do for dinner."

\---

Judy caught on just before they stopped at the boardwalk, and spent the last bit of the trolley ride positively vibrating in anticipation.

"You didn't," she accused, when they debarked at the intricate garden pathways that led to Morgiano's restaurant.

Nick nodded. "I didn't. I did check, just in case, but the wait list is a mile long."

"Oh." She deflated, just a bit, and looked down at her pristine uniform. "We're not really dressed for it, either. TV interviews, sure, but not this."

"Maybe not for dining in, no," Nick said. He offered her his arm. "But I know a guy."

Stephane took time from his dining room duties anyway, to meet them in the kitchen itself, where a staff of tiny rodents scurried around an immaculate brick-and-brass space to make outsized portions of pasta.

He plied them with more spaghetti and house salad than they could possibly eat at once, in thick unmarked boxes. He was having fun with it, too.

"Not a word of this highly unusual behavior," the otter said. He could just barely lift the huge bag into Nick's paws. "We have a reputation to maintain, Officers."

"We're not on duty, Stephane," Nick said. He followed his grin over to where Morgiano himself was washing his paws in a tiny sink and shaking his head in amusement. He passed over the check. "You can count on our discretion."

Stephane waved the folio, and now he did look serious. "What have I told you about this, Wilde?"

"I cannot for my own life remember," Nick said. They started for the exit. "Keep it. For next time."

"Fine," Stephane called. "I'll hold you to it."

\---

Nick saw how Judy was inspecting the food on their way to her apartment, and the way she kept looking back at him as they climbed the stairs to her floor. And she watched as he set the food down just inside her threshold to latch the door shut and slide the security chain home.

When Nick turned around she was pulling on his tie, making him thump to his knees. Her paws against his cheeks held him still so she could kiss him, hard, and then she nuzzled close with her chin over his snout. Nick closed his eyes.

"You felt it too, huh?"

"I figured something was up," Judy said. "Considering the last time we were there. What's the occasion?"

"I think it's us."

"You think."

"Ever since the interview it's been nagging at me. Bogo was talking about it today, too," Nick said. She let him get to his feet, so she could go find plates. "And I realized that we don't know how long it's been. Right? I haven't kept a calendar."

Her look made something warm start up in his belly. "Since our first time?"

"Since any of it." That night in particular was maybe the one he didn't have to worry about. It would be burned into his memory for the rest of time.

And everything else was just as vivid, even if he didn't have the dates down exactly. Shutting down Baird, and Boots before him. The rough encounters with larger predators, that still got him scared for her, even now. Lying half-naked together in bed, listening to her chat with her family. Standing half-naked in this very room not so long ago, when they'd first explored what they'd be getting into.

"I keep counting backwards," he summarized. "We went back to the farm that first time, what, six months ago?"

"Almost seven, I think."

"Right. And when we were settling in."

Judy had two big bowls in her paws. It was close enough. "There was Merc's concert, and all those nights before. The sky trams. And the garden."

Speaking of...

Nick found the cutting board, buried under a bunch of books on her desk, and rummaged in the crate by the microwave for the knife he'd gotten her. It was high-end ceramic - her sister Sharon's recommendation, when she heard how often they relied on fresh vegetables they grew themselves.

"Are there still carrots? Or cucumber?"

"We're going to have cucumber for months," Judy said. She went to the fridge. "More than we know what to do with. I need to call the food bank, or the farmer's market or something."

He accepted the one she held out and started chopping. It would go well in their salad. Judy sorted their food into bowls, and stowed the rest where it would keep in the fridge.

They sat against the front of the big green couch to eat. Judy had changed somewhere in there, into one of her favorite oversize shirts and apparently very little else.

"Definitely not dressed for the dining room, then."

"I think I like this better right now." She leaned against him. "You could join me."

"Do I even have clothes here? I thought I took all of them to wash."

There was that look again. "Even if you don't, it's not like I'm going to mind."

"I love you." Nick ducked his head, not to take a bite of his spaghetti, but to nuzzle her ears. "I'll get more comfortable after dinner."

So they ate, and Nick changed into the one pair of beaten duty grey pants he had on her clothes rack after all, and they curled up on his couch to quote the entirety of The Dusk Prowler at each other while they watched. The sun sank outside, and when the movie ended they stayed there to listen to the unmistakable rush and murmur of the city at night.

Judy had his tail hugged close. She squirmed on top of him, at his curious paws under her shirt. It was magnetic.

"Did you bring your muzzle?"

 _Oh._ "No." He rested his chin between her ears. "This kind of came together as we went. Sorry, sweetheart."

Judy twisted around to look at him. Her claws prickled against his chest at his expression. "Something to plan for tomorrow, then. Quit it."

She was insistent that he stop being glum about it, too, even if it wasn't exactly helping matters. Judy pushed her chin and cheeks over him, until she had him chasing her around with his nose. He had to squeeze her tight to keep her still, and to keep his own paws from doing too much exploring.

"You're making me want to go get it right now, Carrots."

"I love you." Judy huffed against his throat. "And you know you're not going to need it forever."

Nick knew. And he was so happy for that. Everything they'd done together, every professional and personal problem they ever came up against - they always found a way to beat it. And who else could say that? That their relationship just got better and better? He hoped it never ended.

Judy did settle down after that, high up enough that she could hold his head in her paws and look him in the eye.

"Tomorrow," she murmured.

"First thing, if you like."

"And the day after tomorrow, and the day after that." Nick felt her nose tap against him. "I think that's how we should do this. That's how it happened. It was never just one night."

Leave it to Judy to turn uncertainty into something so perfect. Nick pulled her closer, to keep her wrapped up safe, to drift off as they watched the subtle glow of the city outside.

"It's a promise."


	37. All in the Editing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got a horror movie prompt!

Judy Hopps was ten years old when she first watched Perceptus, and she lost any taste for horror films in short order.

Watching had been a dare on a sleepover, mild enough on the surface compared to some of the outlandish havoc a burrow full of adolescent rabbits got up to. And Judy devoured mysteries, and ghost stories. How bad could a scary movie be?

Her siblings and friends squeaked and hid under their sleeping bags at the worst parts, when the invisible monster stalked its way through a laboratory full of hapless scientists. They'd flinched away as it picked the staff off one by one until it was just the jaguar heroine, facing off in the specimen freezer against the huge set of disembodied, bloodstained claws.

Not Judy. She watched the whole thing, with her knees to her chest on the ratty couch in the dorm, and cheered under her breath when Felicia had emerged unscathed.

She'd felt so superior afterward, while the rest of them ate their cookies and brushed their ears and traded frightened recollections. She'd watched the whole thing, she told them again and again.

And when they had all finally settled down to sleep, Judy had stared at the jagged, claw-like shadows of the tree branches waving through the window, so scared she could barely move to turn on the nearest lamp.

\---

"Back up," Nick said, around his mouthful of pasta. "It's invisible, right? So how was it going to cast shadows?"

"I never said it made sense," Judy muttered. "Logic wasn't a priority at that point."

"I watched it, too, I think." He leaned back in his kitchen chair. "Years back. And the only shadows I remember are from the piano wire they used to make it look like stuff was moving around."

"So it never scared you."

"Piano wire? Come on. It takes more than that." Nick grinned and slurped another noodle. "And I'll bet this remake isn't any better. Any time they modernize something it falls flat. We'll be laughing."

Movies on the couch were such a common pastime now that they'd sprung for a tablet, as a bit of an upgrade from the phones they usually crowded around. Nick patched the audio through to his stereo and Judy scrolled through the streaming catalog.

"Perceptus." The new cover art was a gloomy hallway. Judy chewed her lip. "Looks promising."

"Not scared, are you?"

"No."

He shifted at her tone, where he was settling down on the couch behind her. She felt his paws at her waist. "I'm not attached to it at all, you know. We can watch Captain Canopy again, if you want something safer."

"I'm not a kid anymore," Judy said, and stabbed the play button. "This is different."

And she could privately admit that it would already be safer, with Nick keeping her wrapped up. It was an excuse to cuddle, really. His paws and tail were the best antidote to anxiety Judy had ever found - and that would hold true even if it was all fictional, on screen.

It was set in a much more modern lab this time, and at the scientist's apartment, and out in some nameless city somewhere. The lead was a lynx, not a jaguar, and there was a love story bolted onto this retelling, for some reason.

But the first kill was still tense. And the second. There was something to be said for modern editing and effects. There was no piano wire here - just clever camera work and carefully arranged scenes that showed what the monster could do, without ever having to show the space it occupied.

This time Judy did hide from the jump scares she remembered were coming - and that wasn't all of them. Nick laughed at her.

After the first one, anyway. But his claws needled into her each time. As far as she could tell, he hadn't looked away yet.

Judy watched the final showdown through her fingers, so she caught only glimpses of the already-vague monster. Its enormous talons were like glass dipped in crimson, and it had a mouth brimming with freshly stained teeth that opened far too wide whenever it roared.

It died in a fiery explosion. This was a high-budget remake, after all.

As the credits rolled, Judy loosened her full-body grip on Nick's tail.

"Not that bad," he said.

"No?"

"Invisibility? Still so implausible," Nick said. "And it was like fighting a stained glass window, there at the end. You scared of windows, too?"

"Oh, stop it."

Nick let her get up, and let her brush her teeth first while he went to turn down the bed. They traded, and when they got under the fluffy comforter Judy wriggled up against Nick's warm chest.

He must have felt her tense against him when he reached over to flick off the bedside light.

He smiled down at her. "It's not like it could even fit through my door."

"Not helping, Nick."

That finally got him to drop the ribbing, like she'd tripped a switch for him somewhere that was attached to the enthusiasm in his ears. His paws came up behind her shoulders, and his tail.

"Sorry," he said. "I'm done. And I'm not going anywhere."

"Good."

"Do you want me to leave the light on?"

Judy sighed against his throat. "No, it's okay."

Nick got the light and settled down. His paws were big enough to wrap around her, enough that she could tuck their twined fingers under her chin. It helped. Judy was able to keep her mind in the here and now with him. It kept her from thinking about what he'd said about the size of the door, and the whole kitchen that they couldn't see from here, and how the monster's claws would reach from one side of the bed to the other with room to spare when it loomed over them and they didn't see it coming.

Twice, that made her shift against Nick, to listen and watch with her heart in her throat as nothing changed except him falling further asleep next to her.

She didn't remember following suit.

And she would barely remember being suddenly awake again, some time later in the dead of night, when Nick did move against her. She kept her eyes very nearly closed and her ears still, as he raised his head and leaned over her, like he was shielding her. She could feel his heart racing against her, while he kept his eerie nocturnal attention fixed on an empty corner of the room for a long, long time.

And for the sake of his reputation, she decided not to remember how he'd reached over and turned on the light beside the bed before he curled up around her again.


	38. Scratch Line [Thematic Thursday 03.16]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Judy had seen a few brush fires growing up - some from lightning from the early storms, and some set intentionally when they were clearing land. A good tree-fed ladder wildfire didn't look much like that at all. It was mesmerizing. The singular sheet of flame was a good twenty feet tall, licking at even the tallest ponderosas down there like something alive. It hissed and roared loud as a waterfall now, and the heat that rolled over them was so intense it made Judy cringe away. She could feel her vest warming, even from here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Thematic Thursday - prompt was camping and wilderness. I did some worldbuilding.

Judy had never equated dense pine trees with Zootopia, but this city was still finding things to surprise her with. Right now, it was that this strip of beautiful montane forest was here at all. If she'd known, she would have been out here exploring with Nick much sooner.

But she didn't have much time to appreciate the way the sun lanced through the pine needles, or the giant boulders off amid the mossy trunks, or the sound of the wind in the branches, or even the memory of the glass-smooth lake they'd passed on their way up here. Right now there were citizens to evacuate.

It was a fast-moving wildfire, deep in the divide between Savanna and Rainforest, on the south end. The wildland crews were still getting a sense for its behavior, and for how it had started. Their guides had called it unusual. The season wasn't especially dry, and there hadn't been any recent storms sweeping over the city to touch off any blazes with lightning.

But for now the cause was kind of moot. The fire was threatening the dozens of homes back here, and it was already close enough to hear and smell. The city's fire division needed to get these mammals out as soon as they could, and it had enlisted emergency help from ZPD and ZEMS to do it. Judy and Nick had paused a bunch of paperwork to volunteer to go door-to-door. It was exciting, in that way Judy always felt a little guilty about.

Now they were stacked behind a pair of wildland firefighters who would be working to protect this end of the road. Riles, the deer in the lead, had a ruggedized tablet in his hooves, which he was checking against an old-fashioned pen-and-paper map. His partner Carteret carried their tools over both shoulders. Their heavy yellow uniforms were already smudged and stained with smoke from an early morning of work.

But even with the crackle and rush of fire they couldn't see, and the hazy pall of smoke that was starting to settle over everything and give the sun an orange cast through the pine branches, they weren't moving faster than a trot yet. Long experience, Judy wondered, or an abundance of caution?

"Last one," Riles said. He pointed to the fancy treehouse at the end of the dirt road. It spanned the open air between two big pines. Judy could see clear underneath it, past a well-kept back lawn to the gully on the other side. "Computer says they haven't left yet."

The firefighters posted up at the end of the drive, either to keep a better view of the surrounding trees or to avoid crowding the thin steps that led up to the tiny front door. It was up to Judy and Nick to climb. The house had to be home to someone small. Squirrels, maybe.

"Call it," Nick muttered as they went. " _We'll take our chances_ , or _I'm not leaving without blank?_ "

"That's not fair," Judy said. "It's been both sometimes."

Maybe woodland residents were just more accustomed to close brushes with natural hazards. A fair few of the residents on this winding road out in the trees hadn't shared the firefighters' sense of quiet urgency.

Nick rapped on the door and it whisked open almost immediately. A marten blinked up at him, with an open duffel in his paw.

"We _know_ , officer."

Of course it was going to be one of these mammals. Judy watched Nick's subtle shift from enthusiasm to tolerance in one swish of his tail, and took over for him. "Sorry, sir. The fire's moving this way quickly. You need to evacuate as soon as possible."

"You didn't give us much lead time," the marten said. He flowed away further into the house. "We'll be ready soon enough."

Judy looked back down behind them, to where Riles was making a big show of looking at his watch. He shook his antlers, until Carteret grabbed them to hold him still, so she could finish checking over his custom helmet before they started on the fire line. "Sir, you have about two minutes."

"Two _minutes?_ " The other marten - probably his wife - stopped in a kitchen entryway. "I can't even smell the smoke yet."

"No, Ma'am," Nick agreed. He had to be noticing it even more than Judy was at this point, with his nose, but he wasn't going to argue right now. "Is there anyone else in the building?"

"Well, I'm not leaving without my recipes," she said. "Carl, get the paperwork."

" _Ma'am,_ is there anyone else?"

"No!" She whirled away into the kitchen.

Judy clicked her teeth together in annoyance, loud enough that Nick tilted his head down at her. They stood where they were and watched as the couple raced around in increasing agitation. The scent of smoke grew heavier.

"One minute, sir. You need to leave." Judy's count was a little fast, but at least they'd be alive to get over it.

"There's still filing upstairs."

"You're out of time, sir," Nick said. He pulled the door wider.

"You don't understand-"

"Is it worth being trapped here by the fire?" Judy cut him off. "Yes or no, Sir. That's the risk you're taking."

The marten's claws sounded on the wood of the banister, but he finally moved for the door.

Their cars were on ground level, under a heavy-duty awning. They loaded bags and parcels into each, spurred to some faster action now that they could all see the glow creeping over the dense horizon. But the woman double-took through the rearview and twisted around at the sharp implements the firefighters had with them.

"Wait! They're not going to use those, are they? I didn't landscape the entire yard just to watch it get torn up."

"Ma'am, go."

" _Please,_ there's a hose in the backyard, just let me-"

Nick stepped up to keep the door from opening any wider and looked back at Judy. _I'll take care of this._

Judy left him to convince the couple to depart and hustled back to the firefighters. Was it her imagination, or was the air thicker now? Scorched pine didn't smell bad, necessarily, but when it was this pervasive it stung in her sinus. The crackle was getting louder, too.

"Two accounted for and moving." Their cars crunched past on the gravel. "Finally."

Carteret bounced on her toes and hooked both wrists over the haft of the enormous Pulaski tool on her shoulders. The big cougar was still frowning up at the trees in the distance, even with the mounting noise from the fire. Her tail lashed.

"I'm telling you, it's too wet for this. The last precip survey was at 90 percent of average." She led the way off the road. "Come on. With our luck, it's going to come right up that gully."

They both had to duck to get under the house. Riles scraped his antlers anyway and muttered a curse.

"Told you you should have gotten those trimmed."

"Yeah, yeah."

Carteret swung her axe down so it rushed in the smoky air and tilted her head at Nick as he caught up. "No trouble?"

"That's it," Nick said. He coughed once on the smoke and shook his head. "Just us out here now."

"Okay." They started across the yard. "I wouldn't get much closer without fire gear. Be ready to back up fast if it's as bad as I think it is."

Judy had seen a few brush fires growing up - some from lightning from the early storms, and some set intentionally when they were clearing land. A good tree-fed ladder wildfire didn't look much like that at all. It was mesmerizing. The singular sheet of flame was a good twenty feet tall, licking at even the tallest ponderosas down there like something alive. It hissed and roared loud as a waterfall now, and the heat that rolled over them was so intense it made Judy cringe away. She could feel her vest warming, even from here.

"Yeah." Carteret chuckled. She pulled the wide goggles down off her helmet and into place. "It looks hungry, too. If it shifts this way we're in trouble."

"You said it," Riles agreed from behind them. "Look at this space violation." He rapped his rake on the trunk of a skinny tree with reddish, waxy leaves. It was one of three standing in fresh mulch in the center of the yard. "Like an arrow pointing to the house."

Judy craned up at them, and the distress the wife had showed clicked a bit more. She must have planted these herself, and from the healthy look of them they were either brand new, or had been tended along for years.

And Judy knew what was coming next.

"When have these wannabe country folk ever listened to the warnings?" Carteret asked. "Coming right down. Get a fast break going at the edge. Six feet. We're not going to have time for more."

"You got it."

"Time for you to clear out, Officers." She pointed one-pawed with the axe down the road. "Back the way you came, unless this jumps on you. If you can see flames, move straight away from them. Do not try to race a fire on an angle."

Nick was as no-nonsense as he'd been in the house. "Yes, Ma'am. Good luck."

"Hopps, right?" Her axe thunked halfway into the first soft trunk with one swing. The leaves shook. "And Wilde? Thanks for the help, both of you."

\---

The command post was back on the nearest paved intersection. It was a mass of emergency lights from the wildland trucks and ambulances - none of which, Judy was relieved to see, had been necessary yet.

They checked in at the main tent to report their stretch of road was clear of residents, and took a bottle of water to share. Nick wet his paws to scrub at his face, too.

"Nice work," she told him.

"Yeah." Nick's voice was muffled. "The forest is nice, but I think I might like rowdy suspects downtown more."

"You and me both."

They whiled away the next hours directing traffic and keeping onlookers out of the way. The fire grew or moved on the edges of their perception the whole while. The smoke billowing into the air shifted in the wind. It was thick and dark and almost pretty, in an ominous way - except when it blew directly over their station and made Judy's eyes sting.

That made it harder to manage the steady stream of residents passing through the organized chaos of the intersection. They had cars and even trailers loaded with personal belongings in straight-up violation of the evacuation guidelines that they travel light and fast.

But Judy couldn't help a twinge of sympathy, too. A wildfire wasn't as easy to contain as one in the more developed areas of the city, and those tended to be bad enough. Mammals who lived out here stood to lose more. There would be no replanting the trees that marten had lost, even in the rich soil fires could leave behind.

And Judy knew how that felt. She and Nick poured time and energy and memories into their own little patch of green, on the roof of her building. Even if a fire leveled the place - and she didn't like thinking about that - at least she would be able to take her seeds with her, in the little fishing organizer she kept them in. Their garden would survive to grow again. Was that more than the lady they'd rushed out the door could say?

When they broke again, to rest for a moment at their cruiser, Nick reached over to push their refilled water bottle into her paws. She took it absently.

"What?"

"I'm just thinking about the garden," she said.

His ears gave an understanding flick back and he smiled down at her. "Don't beat yourself up over it, Carrots," he said. "You're doing your job so that the worst they'll lose is some landscaping. That's a good thing."

He _would_ have guessed. "I would take the seeds," she said. "If I ever had to get out."

Nick watched to make sure she was drinking enough. "Structure fires are rare, you know."

"I know." Who was he convincing? Judy reached out to brush at the dusty fur of his arm, where he was sitting in the open passenger seat. "Doesn't hurt to plan, though."

"As long as you don't ever leave it as late as they did." Nick grabbed her paw briefly, and looked down the road to where they'd pressured the martens to leave earlier that day. "It's not worth getting hurt over, and I seem to remember you know a farmer or two who could give you new ones. Yeah?"

They were fourth-generation seeds now. Unique to their garden. But Nick was right: They weren't as important, no matter how much that notion stung for both of them. "Yeah."

"Hey, Hopps."

They both turned to see a firefighter coming up, so smeared with soot that it had left a clear pattern when he'd removed his helmet. He had a bottle of water, too.

"Riles!" She finally recognized him. "How did it go?"

"Oh, we saved the house. It turned away just in time. But we found something else, too, a couple acres down after it burned through the gully." He paused to drink. "I came back to see if we could borrow a couple of cops. Do you have a minute?"

\---

Carteret was disgusted. Judy could see that much in her shoulders and lashing tail as they hiked up the far hill, before she even turned around.

"Did you find any more?" Riles asked as the approached.

"No," she said, and moved aside to make room for them. "But this was plenty."

It was a little square of cinderblocks, scorched black with soot and half covered in exhausted charcoal and ash. The whole area was like that - there wasn't much more than the occasional log left recognizable.

"This is a fire ring?" Nick guessed.

"Cute, isn't it? Someone's been burning trash, because the public turbines in Rainforest aren't _convenient_ enough." Judy flinched as Carteret swung her axe into one of the logs with a little too much force, to split it open and check for embers. "I knew it was too wet out here to start naturally. You can see where it spread down into the wash."

"Water," Riles said.

Carteret turned to take the sweating bottle and shot him a grateful look. Judy crouched in the steaming epicenter and looked around. There were the remains of pallets here, and lots of paper and wrappers. Nothing identifying, though, and there was no sign of other mammals nearby, except the other firefighters sweeping through here for hotspots. But then who would stick around after kicking off something like this?

ZPD would have to head up the investigation. They had a team that liaised with the government's natural resources division to track down cases like this. There were fines involved, and sometimes probation. Unless...

"It didn't get any of the houses, did it?"

"Two, so far, and some outbuildings," Riles said. He had his field tablet out again, to take pictures of the scene.

Carteret worked her jaw. "Down the fork, about a mile that way. And we haven't wrapped the whole thing up yet, so it might get worse before it gets better."

Criminal negligence, then, if they could prove anything. The city would want a piece of this, too.

"We know the DA," Judy said. "She's built her career on prosecuting environmental crime. If you or ZFD want to give statements."

"Pointed ones," Carteret agreed.

Riles nodded his antlers. "We'll give you photos, too."

Nick was watching her. She didn't have to say it: this would be more paperwork for them, at least at first. But he was okay with that. That little smile was showing.

And it meant they would get to spend at least a little more time out here, too. It wasn't ideal - working in such a pretty place never was.

But Judy had a feeling they would be back on their own time, too.


	39. Observational Evidence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You learn something new about your partner every day.
> 
> [Chronologically compliant](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yPmpmdo39SmiRNC4BJVv2PAWi7fxBoP5FWba9n8s3qg/edit). Takes place early on in Nick and Judy's relationship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a prompt I got from /trash/ a while back:
> 
> "The "Nick and Judy love each other but don't know how the other feels" trope, except instead of feeling like they have to hide it to protect their friendship, they are both super blatant about it but think the other is only giving mixed signals because of species difference in body language or courtship rituals or whatever."
> 
> So I wrote their behaviors here to align with [fox](https://academic.oup.com/beheco/article/15/5/766/318440/Polygynandry-in-a-red-fox-population-implications) and [rabbit courtship behaviors](http://www.reproduction-online.org/content/82/1/209.short) that are sometimes observed IRL.

Judy won because he let her, and he let her because he was pretty sure she was straight-up faster than he was. There wasn't much point in embarrassing himself.

She'd started to pull away about halfway through the loop around the medical campus, when they'd been running for long enough that Nick's cadence had gotten sloppy. He'd chased her for a while, down the long side of the park. It was quiet enough out here this evening that there weren't many spectators, and Nick was glad for that. He was privately enjoying the way her... ears bobbed when she was moving fast.

Judy relented, as they made the final big turn onto the sandy path at the center of the park. She slowed enough to let him draw even - and then she darted off again as soon as he did. Nick stared at the gravel and weighed the exertion it would take. Nope. Not worth it. She would just take off again.

Like that. And that.

"I can't beat you," he gasped, as the water fountain at the end came into view. "Why do you have to rub it in?"

She was running backwards now, with a big, stupid grin on her face. "How else are you going to get better, if you're not challenged?"

"I'm plenty challenged. My ankles hurt, I can't breathe..."

Another cheeky grin, and she was gone, to zip ahead to the fountain and double back. "Come on."

He watched her pull him in that way, and when he stood by the fountain to try to catch his breath she still didn't stop moving. Nick was bent over with his paws on his knees and she was skipping around him in circles.

"You win," he said.

"This time."

"And last time, and the time before that." Nick's ears tracked her around. "And now you're just making yourself more tired for tomorrow."

"Am not," she singsonged as she went by.

There were tiers of red brick benches along one side of the little plaza. Nick moved over to them and sat heavily. Judy followed - and orbited two steps further up before she, too, finally came to rest above and behind him.

"It was a good run," she said in his ear as he caught his breath. "You're faster than you think."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He felt her paws press against the base of his ear, and her tiny claws. They felt good. "You should get ice packs. For right after. It helps with the recovery."

He twisted to look at her - and broke contact. "How's that?"

"It cools down the blood going through your ears," she said. "Old bunny trick. I have some at home, if you want to come get one."

"I should go shower before dinner. I do have some at my place, though."

"Oh." Her feet drummed on the step next to him. "It'll be too late by then."

"Well, do you have one in that belt pack of yours?"

Judy stuck out her tongue.

"Oh, I see how it is," he said.

She left him, to go to the multi-species drinking fountain that was next to the decorative one. Nick watched - but he saw her right ear tracking him, even as she went, so he pulled his eyes away before she bent at the waist to reach the nearest spigot.

This was a couple days now, where something he'd said, or not said, or said wrong, seemed to make Judy cool down a bit abruptly. And this was the worst he'd seen it so far, made all the more noticeable because of how energetic she'd been just a minute ago.

And Nick didn't know what it was. Their banter was as fresh as ever, because while Nick would never admit it to anyone, he worked to keep it that way. The moodiness didn't show up at work, except for maybe in her ears every once in a while. She was too focused for that, it seemed. It was only when they were alone together - which, to be fair, was most of the time they weren't on the clock. This gap before dinner would be the longest bit of daylight they spent apart almost all week.

He worried something had happened. And it would have been something personal, because they currently did everything in their professional lives together.

If she would let him, Nick wanted to try to fix it. That seemed important now - and more important than just keeping his partner happy.

But this wasn't really the time to ask about it, he judged, in case it screwed up those dinner plans before they even started. There would be other opportunities. Maybe later tonight, if the situation felt right. Maybe if they wound up on the couch together, the way they sometimes dozed off, with her against his shoulder.

There were times like that. They hadn't put them into words yet, but the little moments of trust and warmth and shared quiet were unmistakable as something more, something comfortable and easy and at the same time fascinating and new. Nick didn't push on them, because if he did take them too far, too fast - it might all crumble again. It was more important that he stay close to her and let her decide the pace.

So, when he was recovered enough to brave it, they walked in mostly-comfortable silence out of the park toward the tram station. The spring was still in Judy's step - it never really left - but for now she stayed at his side.

\---

Judy looked through the store's freezers and wondered if she'd overdone it.

Well, obviously she had. She was trying to blame the recklessness on the running, at least. On the fact that she was energetic.

Nick had noticed her circling, she was sure. She was just less sure that he had any clue what it meant - and now, in retrospect, she was glad he hadn't asked about it and put her on the spot. How would that have gone? _You see, when a bunny can't stop thinking about a certain fox..._

The evening specified pizza, but Judy didn't see Nick's favorite soy toppings anywhere, and she didn't know what else he liked enough. There was green pepper, or this fancy one with broccoli.

"Carrots."

Or carrots. He'd probably give her grief for that.

Her brain caught up to her ears and she turned. Nick was grinning at her, through the glass of the open freezer door.

"Nick!" She came up on the balls of her feet, and resisted the hug when the door closed between them. "Hi! I- didn't know you were here."

"Spur of the moment thing." He'd showered, too, and changed out of his run gear for a more casual version of the uniform-style shirts they wore on duty. His shiny sunglasses were hooked over one of the chest pockets. "I came to get drinks, because I'm out."

That was right, it was the weekend. "What are we drinking?"

"I was hoping you knew," Nick said.

She snorted at him. "Something not too bitter. Maybe that orchard brew."

"Sure thing." His tail started to sway around behind him as he turned to find the libations, until Judy held him up.

"Is supreme okay? They're out of your favorite."

He turned to her again. "Definitely."

She got the pizza, and he got the beer. Nick stood behind her in line, and followed her down the sidewalk on the way back to his apartment. Judy was glad to take the lead, if she was honest. She knew the way - and she was worried that if she spent much more time watching his tail sway, she might do something she couldn't explain away as incidental.

Because this was altogether different, and almost intimidating to think about. Reckless, even. The dancing around him was going to get his attention one of these times. The longer it went on, the better the odds he would ask. She could feel his eyes on her, even now. But she felt like talking about this wouldn't be enough. If she noticed herself doing it again, maybe she just needed to work up the courage to get closer to him.

Nick did take the lead in the lobby, but just long enough to stop them before they made it to the elevators, and open the stairwell door and hold it for her. She gave him a look.

"Got your second wind, did you?"

"Well, we are eating pizza and beer," he said, and started up after her. "It's not the healthiest thing in the world."

"We ran six miles. I think you'll be fine."

They were both breathing steadily by the time they made the fourth floor. Nick leaned around her to get the door again and locked it behind them, and they went to the kitchen to preheat the oven. Judy took her beer to the couch she kept facing his windows, and he followed and collapsed on the far end.

"Or maybe we should have taken the elevator after all."

She risked another peek at the flick of his tail, and at his splayed paws, and the streak of lighter fur at his open collar while he tipped his head back to drink. "At least you don't have to wake up for work tomorrow."

Nick looked over. "Do you have nightmares about oversleeping for roll?"

She pulled her eyes to her own drink. "Three, four times a week. Weekends, too."

"Okay, good."

They burned their whole first drink talking like that - about work, and office politics that Judy was too focused to really care about and that Nick had seen too often to really care about. They put the pizza in the preheated oven, and then Judy went on about how Francine kept trying to tell her about who she was dating. Not even that seemed to bother Nick. He just paid polite, quiet, almost severe attention, and seemed to enjoy her storytelling.

And it went on. Nick followed her into the kitchen when she went to get another beer, and went totally noncommittal when it came time to choose slices of pizza. She didn't want to look over while she ate, because she was pretty sure he was still watching, like he was afraid to let her out of his sight. It was making her feel a bit self-conscious. Maybe he had noticed her during the run after all.

Which meant it was time to do this. Tonight. She would need just a minute first, though. The drinks had gone right through her.

Judy waggled the empty. "I'll be right back," she said, and slid off the couch.

But Nick got to his feet, too, and there was still something to his attention...

He stopped when her ears fixed him, though. And before she knew it she was looking him in the eye. Now they were both busted.

"No, I mean I'll _be right back_ be right back," she said. "Unless you're going to follow me to the bathroom, too?"

That got Nick's ears to flatten. His tail curled around his ankles. Judy took a step closer, and another, and watched his muzzle point at her.

"You're doing it again," he said, as he turned to keep her in view.

"No, _you're_ doing it again." There was something there. He was watching her the same way. "Are you scared I'm going to go somewhere?"

"I just want to make sure you're okay." Nick grimaced. "You've been acting funny."

It made Judy's ears prickle. Yes, she had been. Because he couldn't see it, and she didn't know how to get more blatant about it without touching him, without digging her paws into his bushy, fuzzy tail.

And she was too doing it again, walking slow circles around him so he followed her with his nose. She looked him up and down.

"So have you." she said. The couch was in the way again; she jumped onto it so she would be at eye level.

"Because of you." Nick's tail wrapped a bit tighter around him. But he tilted his head.

Judy didn't want to say the words. Not yet. _Pretty sure_ wasn't close enough, no matter how much she wanted him to send this back to her, no matter how much she suspected he would if she just asked. She'd learned the hard way with Nick what speaking before she had a chance to really think things through could do.

That she worried about that at all was good evidence that she was on the right track. But if it was true, getting it right would be even more important.

But she could talk around the problem, the way she'd been walking around it this whole time. Judy took a deep breath.

"There's a thing bunnies do," she said. Should she just reach out for him? "When we start to think that someone's special."

Yep. His big green eyes widened, and his tail lashed all the way back around.

"Is there, now." His smile was slow, and oh so warm. "It's funny. Foxes do, too."

"Do they-" His face made up her mind for her and she ducked to take up his paw, so she could see his claws. "-follow that someone around?"

"Just about everywhere," Nick said. "But only because she won't hold still."

"Don't blame this on just me," she murmured. His breath nearly hummed out as she pulled him closer and tucked his paw underneath her chin. _Her fox._ Her fox, and now they both knew it. This was just the next step. "I didn't know. Neither of us did."

"Though it all is kind of obvious in retrospect," Nick said. He had his other paw on her shoulder. "You just liked what you saw."

She squeezed him tighter. "You were the one who followed me up the stairs."

"Well." Judy felt his muzzle brush across one of her ears, where her blood was rushing fast enough to feel. "I liked what I saw."

The relief - the simple, wonderful explanation for what they'd both looked right past - was making her fur stand up. Judy wanted to wrap her arms around Nick's chest and affirm that yes, this really was happening. That there was something new there.

But she didn't want to scare him off, either. It was uncharted ground.

"So now what?"

Nick ducked his head to smile down at her. "It's up to you."

"Why did I know you were going to say that?" She let him go, so her fingers trailed over his. "Stay there. I will be right back."

\---

And when she came back from the bathroom it was still true. Nick was sitting on the couch, watching her like he was fighting the urge to get closer. Judy sat right next to him this time, and because he was following her absolutely every lead, she was the one who had to pick the night's movie, and balance her phone on his knees so they would both be able to see.

Not that either of them were paying all that much attention. She leaned against him like she did when she got sleepy, but this time it was intentional. She had her paws on his tail where it had wandered into her lap, and he had his arm around her, keeping her close.

Slow was good. For both their sakes, even when it felt so right that it was a physical pressure in her chest that kept making her shift against him. She and Nick were two very different mammals, when it came down to it, with two sets of expectations and reactions and habits that went all the way down to the taxonomic level. This had been a mostly harmless example, and because they'd both noticed in time it had had the happiest of endings.

For now, Judy thought, that was new and exciting enough.


	40. I'll Stay Here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a thing I wrote a couple weeks ago for TT and never got around to uploading here. Canon compliant; takes place after [Observational Evidence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6727384/chapters/23010480).

Nick could see the drama playing out at the edge of the dock, where the gang of burly enforcers had their captives at gunpoint. But all he could hear was the quiet patter of the rain starting up on the window, and Judy's breathing.

And he was just too tired to reach down and find wherever his earbud had gone. It might disturb Judy, too, and she looked especially happy where she was.

"You sure this is comfortable?" he asked.

Judy's paw tightened in the fur of his collarbone, where she had decided she needed to climb up to lay on top of him. He could feel her murmur against his own chest. "Mhm."

They'd put on a movie after dinner, but right now it wasn't getting much attention from either of them. They were both too full of hot food and too tired coming off a week of mindless deskwork to sit up and follow along. And Nick didn't really need his half of the shared earbuds, wherever it had fallen to. They both knew this movie backwards. He could deliver lines right along with The Dusk Prowler as he battled the forces of darkness.

And now that Judy was using his chest as a pillow, he wasn't sure if she was still watching. She looked a bit glassy-eyed when he glanced down. But he left her where she was, with his paw on her shoulder toward the crook of the couch.

She did this sometimes, when she worked really hard not just for hours but for days at a time. She pushed herself - and him, for that matter - and refused to drop until they hit a natural stopping point. It probably wasn't healthy.

But they always made time to recharge on the weekends, even when the movies ran late. They would sleep eventually, and if she started drooling on him again he would prod her awake long enough to make sure she was situated in her bed, like always...

\---

Instead, Nick was the one raising his head as unexpected noise from across the room woke him up. He lifted a careful paw off Judy's back to check his watch. Past one. Their movie had ended. The rain had picked up.

And as the two-tone sound came again, he finally placed it: ZEMS' roger beep. Judy had only turned down her radio instead of turning it off for the night, it seemed. Someone had pulled paramedics into the general police band, probably to coordinate on a wreck that needed the backup. Their voices were indistinct enough to be white noise, but the unfamiliar _beep_ was impossible to hear coming and kept dragging at his attention.

But he couldn't move without jostling Judy, who was still sprawled on her stomach on top of him. He was stuck.

_beep_

So he lay back and resigned himself to some sleepiness roulette. At least Judy was soft and warm. Her left ear was draped up over his shoulder, close enough to touch with his muzzle if he wanted to.

But this part still made Nick feel a little guilty. Yes, they had learned this together already, that there were signals there. They both knew what they meant, in an abstract way, even if they didn't know exactly how to act on them.

_beep_

And this wasn't the way. It was still too strange to indulge like this, no matter how good her soft scent was, no matter how it made his stomach warm-

"Nick?"

_beep_

Judy's ears twitched and she raised her head to blink sleepy eyes up at him. "What's that noise?"

He kept still until she reached for him. It was like a signal that it was okay to put his paws back on her shoulders.

"I think it's your radio."

"Oh." She twisted around to look. "Oh, Nick, I'm sorry."

"No, it's okay. Ssshh." Nick tightened his grip. This was different. Now they both knew. Now it was okay to cradle her close in the dark, to turn and deposit her against the warm crook of the cushions. "I'll get it."

It was maybe three steps to the desk, where a red light on her radio's charging cradle was glowing solid for full. Nick twisted the volume knob until it clicked all the way off.

Whe he turned, Judy had pulled a blanket up from where it was piled on the other end of the couch and wrapped it around her shoulders. Her big eyes made him smile.

"What, you don't want to go to bed? I can't be more comfortable than an actual mattress."

"You'd be surprised." Judy stood and wobbled a bit under the weight of the blanket. She held it open in her paws, in clear invitation. She didn't want to leave.

And despite what he might say, Nick was more than happy to let her stay.


	41. High Seas [Thematic Thursday 04.27]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick and Judy are marooned on an island (resort). Gets very **suggestive** later on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for /trash/'s Thematic Thursday. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted it to be an AU period piece about being marooned on an island, or a modern piece about a swanky, exclusive island resort. So I did both at the same time.

They called it the _Isle of Obsidian Springs_ , and it was something of a legend.

Nicholas Wilde had no way of knowing that. He'd lost his map in the crash and the drowned scramble to shore. The formalities didn't matter right then anyway; most important was that the island was simply _not ocean_. That was good enough.

For now he lay on his back in pristine white sand to catch his breath, tried not to think about the throbbing pain in his foot, and willed the sun to drive the chill of the waves from his bones quickly.

Beside him, Judith Hopps sat in the sand and pressed the water out of the fur of her ears.

"Just as well it wasn't the Duchess here in our place."

He gave her a wry look. His soaked tail flipped. "You know this technically means you saved her life again."

She sighed. "And we'll never hear the end of it, I'm sure."

Their trip - and this detour, in a manner - were a gift from a grateful Duchess Fru for their help resolving a dispute with one of their trading competitors. Judith, ever the diplomat and tactician, had negotiated a bloodless agreement as usual. And as usual, Nicholas had stood by and looked dashing. It was a good system.

Their voyage on the grand merchantman _Almirante_ was meant to be a well-earned week of smooth water and sunshine. The Duchess has insisted.

Three days in, the ship had grounded itself on the reef in a fierce gale, while the waves battered it to smaller and smaller pieces. Nicholas had pulled Judith from her frantic efforts to help at the last possible moment. Even in near a day of getting carried through the storm on a shared plank, they hadn't seen any other survivors.

They could have washed ashore elsewhere. There was enough beach for it. When Nicholas raised his head, he could see it stretching away in both directions. But now the ocean was calm as a windowpane. The clouds had receded; the midafternoon sun was on its way down.

"Do you think we're alone?"

"We may as well be," Nicholas said. "Unless we couldn't see the others in the waves."

It made her shiver. "I've had enough of waves. And storms."

"You came through them all right."

"But _you_ didn't." Judith went to all fours in the sand so she could come closer. She brushed her paws on her breeches and reached for him. "Your foot- will you be able to walk?"

Nicholas didn't even remember ricking his pads against the sharp rocks of the bottom. He'd had more important things to worry about. Now his toes twinged and stung when he fanned them. "I'll have to try it."

"Not yet." She pushed at him. "Stay there. Rest." She got to unsteady feet and looked up the beach, to where it gave over to low bushes and lofty palms. "I'll see if there's something to make a compress with."

\---

Nick was right where she'd left him, sitting in the shade and staring out over the twinkling ocean water. Judy crouched next to him and held out the little cardboard box.

"Band-aids."

"You think of everything, you know that?" Nick accepted them.

"I have to keep you healthy somehow," Judy said. "Water here, too."

The shore of the island was littered with rough volcanic pumice. It was easy enough to see coming on the beach, but underwater, where they ran around after their bodyboards, was a different story. Nick had scraped his pads, and they'd had to cut their little surfing expedition short.

"Will it be okay in the sand?" she asked.

"It's soft," Nick said. He paused his drinking and looked up at her. "Sorry about the change of plans."

Judy waved it away. "We were out there for an hour. As it is, I think we're both going to be sore in the morning."

"Oh, definitely." Nick got up and tested his footing. He looked satisfied. "Good as new."

"We can take a break if you want to," she said.

"No, it's all right." Nick was watching her with a little smile.

Lying on the sand in the sun was a perfectly valid way to spend a vacation, but even at her most luxurious Judy didn't like the idea of sitting still for that long. Not while there was so much else to do. If there wasn't surfing, there was beachcombing and hiking and birdwatching.

Nick knew she thought that way, too. But he meant what he said. If he needed time, he would have told her.

"In that case, let's go down the beach," Judy said. "Remember the cliffs at the end we saw on the way in? I think the spa might be down there, too."

His grin widened. "Perfect."

They went back to the room first, though _room_ was selling the private bungalow a bit short. It was right on the water, and came with full-service meals and all expenses paid. Judy was starting to see why Fru Fru spent a weekend every month here - and she was feeling spoiled that her friend had seen fit to share. That donut thing had to run out sometime.

They rubbed the damp and the sand out of their fur with huge fluffy towels, and Judy found a light linen shirt to wrap around her swimsuit that matched the one Nick was already wearing. They set off down the beach together. Thanks to the curve of the island it seemed to go on forever - if Judy didn't turn toward the mainland to the north, the twinkling towers of Zootopia proper might as well have not existed.

\---

The next afternoon they left what Nicholas insisted on describing as camp behind them. There was some sailcloth and rope washed ashore with them, and enough wood to hold it all up in a wobbly tent in the soft sand. They had enough scrap wood and green fronds to set a smoky fire at the beachhead, in case a passing ship happened across them. Even luckier, a spring of fresh water trickled from between two boulders on the treeline. But food would need to be scrounged, and that had finally driven them to action.

At least the island was picturesque while they explored for something to eat, along broad beaches in front of steep hills covered in greenery. They could hear birdsong and the drone and click of insects, and the constant gentle waves. The occasional brightly-colored crab crossed their path, waving its pincers in tiny challenge.

"Still no prints," Judith said. She turned and shaded her eyes toward the horizon, straining as if she were listening for something. "And the sun will be down again soon enough. How big is this island?"

"The larger it is, the better our chances of finding something to eat." Nicholas was determined to stay positive. It was bad enough that he was still limping. Every time he did it where Judith could see, her ears wavered. "Our luck will hold."

She looked to put the feeling away. "I know."

But Judith was right: They did appear to be out here alone, with nothing on the flat horizon but the building clouds of another fierce storm. If they didn't come across something that made this worth their while soon, they'd need to return to camp - even if they did so on empty stomachs. Nicholas wasn't looking forward to drawing that line in the sand.

As it was, he was already imagining the vast feasts laid out at port before they'd made sail, with steaming platters of fish and insect delicacies. There was hot mulled wine and warm beds, where they could lay together and listen to the crash of distant waves, instead of wondering if the tide would swallow them again.

But he had to set his sights lower tonight. Tonight, he wished for a coconut that they could crack, or some berries.

He was so preoccupied with tempering his expectations that he nearly ran into Judith as they came around the last curve of the shoreline and she stopped short.

They craned up at the scarp of black rock at the back of the beach. Vines and moss climbed its smooth faces, and there was a clearing along its leeward side.

"What is it?" Nicholas asked.

Judith's cautious ears twisted up toward him. "Haven't you heard the stories? Rock that dark comes from under the ground." She started forward, her concern gone in a wash of curiosity. "This must be one of the burning islands."

He had heard the stories, and seen the smoke and steam coming off the desolate seamounts with his own eyes. They weren't supposed to be green places, dappled with shade.

But Judith was already pressing further in, her nose a-twitch, and Nicholas had little choice but to follow her up close.

"See?" she asked. She reached out to slide a finger underneath the vines. "Feel that. Smooth as glass. Not even the weather can wear it down."

The rock was cool under his paws. "Can we eat it?"

She smiled, maybe for the first time since they'd arrived here. "You'll break your teeth first."

Nicholas walked around the far side and stopped to lean on the stone and take his weight off his bad foot. There was a clear path through the trees into the shade. He could feel his eyes adjusting as he peered into it, searching the parts of the canopy he could see. Maybe, if they were lucky-

There. Coconuts.

"Judith, come see this."

\---

She went around the artful stonework - which was either natural, or planned and executed well enough to pass for the real thing. Nick was looking at the thatched roofs and colorful planters of the east end spa, tucked back in the shelter of the rocks. There was a row of wicker stools along the bar, and an observation deck that looked out over the depression deeper in the jungle.

A big tiger was behind the counter, where he paused his conversation with an attractive deer long enough to smile hello. They had the place otherwise to themselves.

"Want something to eat?" Nick asked. He plucked a menu from the end of the bar as they passed. "I know it's not the same as the big spread they do for dinner at the restaurant."

Now that he was talking about it, yes - and Judy was hungry enough to not care how limited the menu was. Whatever was going on the wood-fired grill smelled delicious.

They sat at the end of the bar, where the pig chef running the grill plied them with sampler plates of kebabs sourced from this very island - little shrimps that Nick couldn't resist, and grilled pineapple and vegetables that about melted on her tongue. The bartender whipped up something cool and refined-tasting, despite it being served in actual coconut shells. They drank and listened to the birdsong that rolled out of the forest like a wave as twilight fell.

"Is the spa open this late?" Judy asked between bites.

"Twenty-four hours," their bartender assured them. He pointed a big paw down the boards into the forest. "If you want the professional treatment you'll need a reservation at the landing, but the rest of the time it's first come, first served. Poolside towels and everything."

"If you're sore from a hike, there's no better way on the island to relax," the chef put in. "The water's always hot."

It sounded perfect. When they had finished their drinks, Judy thanked their hosts, selected a big bottle of cold water from the chiller, and pulled Nick behind her to follow the lanterns into the forest.

\---

It got warmer as they went deeper, and not just in the manner of tropic thickets. There was steam heavy in the air. Nicholas suspected Judith was right - this was one of the fire islands, and fire probably still lurked here somewhere.

The grotto was hidden among the palm fronds, so deep in the green that he almost missed it. But something drew Nicholas to stop and look closer, and push through into the little clearing.

It was a hot spring, shimmering blue in its jet black basin. Behind it, there was a crack in the glassy rock face, and a hot, steady wind. This must have been the source, not so long ago.

The pool bubbled and roiled, as if still over that fire, but when he held his paw close it didn't seem that it would scald him. He brushed his pads over it, tapped a finger against it, and finally dunked them beneath its surface. Bubbles raced around his fingers, and he felt the warmth spread.

"It's hot," he said. "But not too hot." He cupped a pawful of it and brought it to his nose. "Fresh, too."

"The crew told stories of springs like these, where the fire met the water." Judith paced around the glassy edge of the pool. "They say a lost adventurer found them in time to save his life."

"Like us, you mean."

She had dipped a paw in the waters. Her ears fell flat behind her head. "Are we adventurers?"

"We are lost."

A moment of clarity intruded on her face, a reminder that they were out here alone. None would know the fate of the _Almirante_ for another three days, when it was to make port on the far islands.

Nicholas snapped his mouth shut. "I'm sorry, Judith."

It didn't seem to register. She held a paw out and looked at the water, distracted again. "But if these waters are here, then the stories must be true." Her ears flicked back up. "Don't you see? The pools - they didn't just slake the thirst, they healed wounds." She hopped around to him again and set their improvised coconut flask on the ground. "Your foot, Nicholas. If you put it in the water, maybe it will mend faster."

He cast a doubtful look at the pool at her sudden enthusiasm.

"I didn't take you for one to believe in tales like that."

"And what if it works?" she demanded. "If nothing else it will clean your paws."

Yes, it was fresh, but it was bound to be uncomfortably hot. And what if there was some poison he couldn't sniff out?

Still, his paws had fared all right.

He reached down to unwrap the deft compress Judith had woven for him and set it safely aside on the rocks, in case he needed it again. She helped him balance himself on the edge, and he lifted his foot over.

"Ah-"

Her little claws tightened against him. "What is it?"

"Hot. Just hot." Nicholas wiggled his toes. The heat simmered through his very bones - and past the sting of the raw cuts, it was almost pleasurable. "It's not bad. Should I sit in it?"

"Can you?"

"It looks deep enough." He squinted at the dancing bottom. "Here."

He pulled at the ties of his rough linen shirt and shrugged it off his shoulders. Judith reached out to take it, and her eyes were wide. He snorted at her.

"It's nothing you haven't seen before."

"No." A smile danced around her muzzle again. "I suppose not."

"I ought to give you my breeches, then."

She prodded him, even as that smile betrayed her. "Don't push your luck, mister Wilde. You're injured. Not thinking straight."

"No, of course not." Nicholas relented and stepped the rest of the way into the bubbling pool. It was deep, past the edge, and so hot it stole his breath and cramped his stomach. He found he could sit where the rock sloped up to meet the lip, with the water up to his neck.

"It's good," he sighed. "Even if it doesn't heal anything. You were right."

Judith watched him for another long minute. She tracked her ears behind her, down the narrow path they'd arrived on, and came to some decision. She pulled at her own sensible blouse and left it in a pile with his shirt, and scrambled over the edge into the water with a gasp.

"It's _hot!_ "

\---

"Of course it's _hot_ ," Nick teased her. He reached out to steady her. "Doesn't it run on lava?"

"I think they call it a geothermal loop, technically," Judy said. She stood gingerly on the first shelf down and eased into the water. She was surprised to find a seat for smaller-scale mammals, at just the right height under the water to let her sit back and sink up to her neck herself. There was no chlorine or salt, nothing to sting in her nose - and it was so hot it was almost immobilizing. "Oh, that's good."

Nick smiled at her, where just his muzzle and ears showed.

"How's your foot?"

"Good," he said. "I don't know if this will help at all, but it sure feels nice. Our cook was right."

"Are you drinking?" She lifted a paw from the water long enough to point out their bottle, set on the edge of the pool and sweating in the steam. Staying hydrated was important in such a tropical climate, and he'd been hurt earlier.

Judy watched to make sure he did drink, and accepted the bottle when he was done. The water was pristine and so cold it made her teeth hurt.

They drained it in a few drinks between them, and sat back to enjoy the spa. They didn't talk much; Judy just let her paw float the the surface next to his so he could grab it. They watched the stars come out and let the spring bubble the soreness of their day away, and now Judy did finally relax and just let the world go on around them. She lost track of time until the first distant rolls of thunder reached them from over the ocean.

\---

"We won't be able to stay," she said at length. Her chin was level with the water, so her ears floated out behind her. "The storm is coming."

Nicholas looked up at the dense forest, and at the broad slice of star-speckled sky through the canopy above them. He could make out their pall of signal smoke, even from here, which meant it was working.

That was a shame, of sorts. If they had to sit and wait to get noticed, this was the place he wanted to do it. There were plentiful coconuts, and all the warmth they needed, in and out of the water. The company was wonderful, too, though she might have already guessed that.

But like it or not, she was right. He could hear the muffled thunder, this time from the other side of the island. It must be nearly on them. Soon the clouds would cover the sky, and if they were unlucky again, they would be rained on.

At least it had helped. He could see that much, never mind how he felt. Judith had relaxed, finally, no doubt thanks to the heat of the spring. Nicholas wanted to keep that going for her as long as he could, to take her mind off the reality of their situation.

She looked up in surprise when he got closer, but it melted soon enough into her own fierce hug around his midsection.

"We'll be all right, love."

"I know." Her breath was hot when he dipped his muzzle toward hers. "It's just not as carefree as I had expected."

"No," he chuckled. "Do you think we should tell the Duchess? It's quite the story."

"I'm sure she'll love it."

The thump and crackle sounded from the other side of the island, behind the trees. Their ears twisted to catch it. Was the storm already on them?

Nicholas stood to find the edge again, and this time he saw the lights flickering through the top of the canopy. There was another flash, and the thump sounded again.

"That's not thunder." Judith let his paw go. "Those are swivel guns."

It dawned on him slow, and even as the report came again Nicholas could scarcely believe it.

But now they could see the flares, sparkling in the clear above them, turning the forest to temporary day. His heart leapt in his chest.

And she nearly slipped into the deeper water in her excitement. Nicholas reached out to catch her up again.

"Luck hasn't run out yet. I told you."

Her happy laugh washed over him. On an impulse he was sure they both felt, Nicholas held her close to bend and kiss her right there.

\---

There weren't many things that could take Judy's mind off a good fireworks display - but Nick had always known how to pick his moments. She left off staring for long enough to return his attention properly.

She felt her ears dipping in the water as she stood on the lower bench and craned back to meet him. The faint noise from the pinwheels and starbursts and fans of colorful sparks finally arrived. They had to be coming from the Palm, all the way over on the mainland.

"Shame we don't have a better view," she said when he let her breathe.

Nick's grin said it all: He thought the view was just fine. "It's what we trade off for the privacy, I guess." He sat back in his seat and pulled her with him, so she fetched up in his lap. "But it is better from over here. See?"

From here, they had just enough gap in the trees to watch the flickering lights - and as she settled back against him, Judy felt his paws moving under the water to keep her close. Sharp claws skated over her swimsuit. She squirmed.

"Good idea, coming out here." His muzzle was right alongside her ears.

"Mm." Judy twisted just enough to nose at his chin. "It was good timing."

"I'll say." Judy felt his chuckle, and his teeth. He shifted and brought his knees up so she could rest her feet on them under the water. Her quads were flexing.

"Hold still, sweetheart," he murmured past his gentle bite on her ear. "I've got you."

It was easier said than done. There was a warmth in her belly that had nothing to do with the water, and some other distractions besides.

"Are you even going to be able to walk back like this?" she teased, and rocked her hips back to press on him.

He followed, so her breathing hitched. The pads of his other paw cradled her chin. "My foot feels great, actually."

No, he knew exactly what he was doing. And they would have both kept at it, had the muffled rumble not reached their ears from the other direction this time.

\---

They wouldn't be getting rescued tonight. The storm was going to see to that.

"If they launch a skiff in these winds the waves will dash it against the rocks," Nicholas called over the breeze. He was leading them back down the beach. His foot, to his surprise, felt fine.

Judith was still restless as she padded through the sand beside him. They couldn't see anything of the ship from here, and it had stopped firing off flares, but that didn't stop her from checking behind them every few steps.

"They won't leave," he told her. "You heard the signals. We'll wait, and in the morning they'll come around to see where all the wreckage came from, I'm sure."

"It doesn't look rough," she said. "But I suppose it will be worse out in it."

"There's no need for them to take risks, whoever they are," Nicholas agreed. For now, they would rest and watch the storm roll in. He reached down to pull her closer against him as they walked. "And even if the rain starts up, it won't be that bad. We have shelter this time."

Her ears lifted. It was enough.

And this time, Nicholas thought as he swept the droopy canvas aside for her like it was some grand curtain, maybe they might find some enjoyment in it.

\---

She found Nick sitting in just his fur on the deck overlooking the vast water, with the nozzle of the needlessly fancy outdoor shower in his paw so he could rinse the sand from his feet.

They'd made it back just in time: The clouds were off the horizon and looming over them now, green and purple with imminent rain. They could probably sit here on the sheltered chaises without getting anything more than misted, but it was bound to get chillier soon. Judy could smell it in the wind.

She stood next to him. "Is your foot okay?"

"I honestly don't even notice anymore," Nick said. He shut off the water and accepted the towel she passed over. "But maybe I'm just getting used to it."

She fought the yawn. "We can order breakfast in, if you need to take a break."

"And what about you?" he asked.

"I'm okay."

"There'll be more time to do things tomorrow," Nick said. He reached up to pull her down again. His paws slipped under the shirt she'd put back on after her own rinse. "But I guess you could take a nap after breakfast."

"And miss the tide pools?"

He laughed at her tone. "See? You have to sleep sometime."

"Not yet." This time the yawn distorted the last word. "You can't let me go until I've paid you back."

Nick's ears flipped down at her in his lap, like he couldn't believe how lucky he was. But he did get to his feet, and scooped her up in his arms. He wasn't limping at all as he bore her off the patio and toward the bed.

"Then we'd better get out of the rain."


	42. We're Adults now, so Some Things Never Have to Change

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written from a couple of prompts on /trash/: Judy rides on Nick's shoulders for something, and Judy and Nick ride a Ferris wheel.

"Left!"

"What?"

Judy looked down and prodded gently at his ear. "Go left! I can see the Ferris wheel over there."

"No ice cream first?"

"No time! _Hurry!_ "

Nick bore them left, through the press of mammals of all ages and sizes that were still thick on the field, even this time of night.

Carrot Days were a production - even more so than they'd been when Judy had still lived here. It seemed that every year, the grounds sprawled wider. More attractions went up, more cooks and vendors brought exotic treats, and more mammals came to enjoy themselves.

And it was tricky, navigating the crowds when you were three times taller than usual. But they made it work. Nick focused on carrying her, and she steered. At least they got a bit of a berth with her on his shoulders.

Nick was breathing steadily when they arrived at the short line for the wheel, but he'd held up all right. He sank carefully to his knees in the dusty hardpack so she could clamber off. Judy caught the murmurs of surprise at their antics, and dismissed them. It wasn't the most attention they'd garnered that evening.

The Ferris wheel was covered in multicolored lights, and had to be as tall as some buildings in the city. It was probably built for mid-scale mammals at least, if the jumble of footstools at the base was any indication. Small riders like rabbits or mice would need help getting in and out of the cars.

"Thanks for the ride," she said.

"I did owe you." Nick braced his paws on his knees and grinned down at her for the first time in a while. "Do you have the tickets?"

"Here." Judy dug in the pocket of her jeans for their passes. Two left. It was just as well this looked to be the last call anyway. They couldn't have arranged this more perfectly.

The whole team of beaver carneys loaded the wheel with practiced efficiency. Judy passed over their tickets, nodded at the warnings to keep her paws inside the ride, and jumped up alongside Nick into the second-to-last car. They got it to themselves.

The ground dropped away. Judy stood on the edge of her seat to look out at the crowds, and the tents and lights of the fair. Nick sat next to her and followed her gaze. He was catching his breath.

"You going to be all right?"

"Oh, yeah," Nick said. He snaked a paw around her shoulders and snugged her closer. "It's more fun than when we do that at skills, too, because you're not pretending to be dead weight."

"Like this, you mean."

She tilted back into his lap so she was looking up at him, and the little lights studding the roof of their car. The fur on his ears ruffled as they climbed up into the night breeze. She felt his paw wrap around her cheek.

"Like that."

"You should get more target practice at the next skills day. Mr. Reeder said so."

Nick snorted. "Get beat by four points, and she's not going to let me forget it. This wasn't part of the deal."

Mr. Reeder was a face from Judy's childhood. He'd indulged her request to switch the little plink rifles for actual air pistols, once he'd seen their badges, and two trained cops going head-to-head at the fair's range had drawn quite the boisterous crowd.

The stakes had been simple: if Nick won, Judy bought the eventual ice cream. If Judy won, Nick carried her on his shoulders to whatever they did next - and then bought the eventual ice cream.

"Look at it this way," Judy said. "You posted one of the highest BB gun scores Mr. Reeder's ever recorded."

"Mm." Nick was taking advantage of their private car to press his muzzle against the base of her ear."Second only to you."

He wasn't usually this snuggly in public - most of the time it waited for closed doors. But maybe this was close enough. Maybe he felt like she did, that the soft glow of their car and the breeze was a perfect cozy excuse.

So she twisted around so she was sitting upright again, right in his lap, and they watched the lights in the distance together.

"I think we can see the whole fair from up here."

Nick put his snout right alongside hers, so their cheeks pressed together, and followed her gaze. "Did I really carry you across the whole thing?"

"Just about."

"Is your dad here with Gid?" Nick pointed to the rows of multicolored tents along the edge of the grounds. "They have pies to enter, right?"

"Judging isn't until tomorrow. And it's a bit dark to be setting up the stand tonight."

"Ah."

They had to back off most of their cuddle as the wheel brought them lower, to where those on the ground would be able to see into the car. Judy kept just her eyes and her nose above the dented blue rim of their seat, so it would hide her smile at what Nick's paws were doing.

Four and five more times they went around that way. They split their time between each other, and looking out at the distant childhood landmarks Judy could still barely point out to Nick in the dark. The moon was starting to vanish behind wispy clouds, casting the cornfields and silvery streams in a dimmer light than usual. The breeze had started to turn - or maybe they were just feeling it more, now that they were spending long stretches out in it. At least Nick was here to keep her warm.

She watched his ears tilt to scoop out the wind as he turned into it. "Does it smell like rain?"

Nick closed his eyes and drew a steady breath. "I don't think so. Not yet."

The wheel gave a quiet groan and eased to a stop. Their car rocked, and Judy's heart sank. Were they unloading already?

Nick sensed it. He peered out at the ground, far below, then turned to distract her with his claws and dipped muzzle.

"Still got time," he said. "Five seats between us and them."

"It's like hitting the snooze button. You know it's coming." Judy snuggled closer and pushed her paws against the fur of his neck. She could feel his silent, happy growl. "Once when I was a kit, the wheel broke down. We got to spend a whole half hour up here."

Nick grinned, where he was watching the lights of the wheel. "You, sitting still for half an hour?"

"I had fun," Judy said. "And I would this time, too. The company is even better."

The wheel kept dropping them closer to the ground. Nick was making her squirm with his paws, but there was nothing he could do to get the ride to slow down.

So she stayed put when it came their turn, and let him be the one to lean out and get the wheel driver's attention. She sat against him and worked on fixing the lights of the car and this moment with him in her mind, to sit alongside her memories from childhood.

This time, at least, the last stretch before the ground seemed to take a while.

A long while. When Judy finally looked over the edge again, they were climbing back into the sky at half speed.

"What did you do?"

He was entirely too pleased with himself. "We get one more."

It was supposed to be last call. They'd closed the line behind her when she'd climbed aboard. And she and Nick were out of tickets. She knew that; She'd been the one in charge of their shared stash.

"What, did you bribe him?" She already knew, but she asked anyway.

"You make it sound like he's a public official," Nick said.

She stood astride his knees, so she could look him in eyes that reflected the lights of the wheel. "Well?"

"You caught me red-pawed," he muttered. His ears flagged, in exaggerated dejection. "Did you bring cuffs?"

They were far up enough now, she judged, that no one would notice as she leaned hard into their kiss.

"Not this time."

Nick stuck his happy muzzle under her chin. "It does probably mean that the ice cream stand will be closed by the time we're done."

Judy felt the pang, yes, but she buried it before it could show. Sometimes there was just too much to cram into one day. They'd have to come back when her dad opened up the stand the next evening.

Or, she realized, they could cheat a little. Pies weren't complete without ice cream, and Beth and her sisters had been making gallons of the special recipe all afternoon back home, with fresh peaches. Nobody would notice if a couple cones' worth went for a walk out in the moonlight.

"You let me worry about that."

It might be another race. At the top of the wheel, they could see definite clouds gathering on the horizon now, miles away over the fields. But as Judy settled back in Nick's arms to watch the muted flickers of lightning, she had a feeling their timing would hold out just long enough.


	43. Flash Freeze Advisory - Reduce Speed [Thematic Thursday 06.22]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Now he's on the right side," Judy called. "Don't lose him."
> 
> "I won't," Nick said. But he flinched as a car ahead of them swerved out of its pull-over move to avoid a smaller van ahead of it. Nick had to dive briefly over the rumble strip into the oncoming lane to squeak by. "For the record, this is a really bad idea."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Late thematic Thursday entry for /trash/.

"I know, computer. I know." Nick twitched one ear over the rev of the engine at the chimes coming from the dashboard readouts. "Can you shut that up?"

Judy pulled the computer around and acknowledged the alerts. Yes, they knew they were headed right for the fast-moving cold front, in about the worst place to deal with weather in the whole city. It was hard to miss.

The Sahara-side climate wall was already climbing above them in the windshield, glowing orange and positively evil in the dark of the nighttime storm coming on behind it. Judy could see lightning flickering in the clouds already.

But this wasn't the time to appreciate the city's unique scenery. They had a perp to catch.

"He's staying left," she called, when she'd pulled herself forward in her seat again to see out. The rodent-scale taillights weaving ahead of them were hard to keep track of, with the few other cars pulling to the shoulders, and the sand that was blowing around thicker and thicker. "I think he's headed for the tubes."

"Yeah, he'd be crazy not to, with this."

He was probably banking on losing them at the wall. If he got enough lead time he could be through and out into the snowfields and docks on the other side.

But a car that small would have to take the elevated roadways that kept them out of the main tunnels, or it might risk getting blown off the road by the vigorous air mixing that went on where the hot side met the cold. Or, well, run over in the tunnel proper.

Judy was betting he probably didn't know about the new transmitters that let pursuing cruisers lock the gates behind him. If they timed this right, they might be able to trap him inside the wall.

She kept a finger over the switch and split the rest of her attention between taillights, the looming wall and the squall line their radar link said was about to slam into it.

Nick had already hit their floods to see through the blowing sand. The first big snarl of lightning dropped on the other side of the wall. And the raindrops started, one two and a dozen plonks on the windshield. The met alert wailed again - _heavy thunderstorm activity, small mammals seek shelter_ \- and Judy slapped it down.

They were into the fins now, that rose on either side of the road to arrest the worst of the constant wind at the tunnel entrances. Judy could hear them working - the rush of air over the car lessened.

The exit for the small-scale tunnel came up on the left, and their driver blew right past it. Nick hissed between his teeth.

"Crazy it is. Hold onto something."

Judy settled for the laptop arm. Nick punched it.

As soon as they hit the tunnel the wind died completely. But the sound of their sirens and their strobing lights on the low tunnel ceiling was a different kind of assault. Judy hoped it would work better in here, either to get their driver to come to his senses, or to at least get drivers all the way up and down the enclosed road out of the way.

"Now he's on the right side," Judy called. "Don't lose him."

"I won't," Nick said. But he flinched as a car ahead of them swerved out of its pull-over move to avoid a smaller van ahead of it. Nick had to dive briefly over the rumble strip into the oncoming lane to squeak by. "For the record, this is a really bad idea."

Judy swallowed her agreement. Nick had enough to manage without her commentary right now.

The worst of the traffic was past now. She could see their mark tearing down the center line for all he was worth toward the dark mouth of the tunnel.

Signs whipped by overhead, fixed ones that warned of high winds and the programmable ones that were scrolling repeated messages about plunging temperatures and ice on the roads ahead.

"Did you call Precinct Three?"

Judy had never seen the radar feed get that particular shade of dark purple. "And distract you right now?"

"It's fine!"

Their perp didn't slow down as he made the exit. Nick didn't either. They roared out onto the downramp into the industrial sector just north of the wall, and almost immediately had to fight for grip on the slick roads.

She grabbed for the pawset and ticked the radio knob to the Precinct Three local band. "Dispatch, dispatch, car eight-two, 10-80 from Sahara at Tundra gate. Requesting backup."

They were out of the fins on this side now, too, and the wind at their backs was enough to make even their big cruiser sway and creak.

"I lost him!" Nick called.

Judy couldn't see any better. She couldn't even tell if the snow was falling in sheets or just getting blown around. It was just various shades of white, and the rapid flickers of the guardrail reflectors on either side. Only when the wind blew just right and opened a hole in all of it did Judy catch the hint of red brakes ahead.

"There- he's still up there, going left."

_"Eight-two, we're on storm footing here, but we'll get something to you as soon as we can. Keep us advised, and watch your speed."_

"Oh, now they tell us." Nick drove them in the middle of the road for as much safety as they could get, over icy scrabble and thicker drifts that were already piling up.

"They've got a point, Nick." She braced her paws on the dash as the lights ahead of them slewed wildly to one side. Snow had blocked the road in a huge drift. "Like that. _Careful!_ He's losing it-"

And suddenly they were losing it, too. Nick grunted and countersteered hard on the sudden ice, but even their huge wheels just didn't have anything to grab onto. Judy felt the right rear quarter thump off the road and drag in the snow.

Nick drove into it, just in time, and arrested their slide with the snowdrift itself. Powder fountained over the hood and windshield and they juddered to a stop.

He was breathing hard. When Judy reached over to stab off the siren, he covered her paw with his. She felt claws.

"Are you okay?"

Her automatic paws pulled her light windbreaker out of the locker. They still had a driver to detain - if he hadn't been hurt in that crash. She didn't know how she was supposed to get out. Her side of the car was sandwiched against the drift.

"Yeah."

"Judy."

There was something in his ears. He was still holding onto the wheel for dear life with his other paw.

So she looked past the adrenaline, for his sake. She stopped her dressing long enough to check, where her shoulder had bumped up against the door. She was all right.

"I am."

Nick forced a deeper breath and nodded. "Okay." He dug in the pocket of his own coat and pulled out a gaiter. "Here."

"I'm going to get lost in this."

"You're going to want it out there." Nick cracked his door and flinched back, ears flat, as the wind did its best to tear it off. He had to raise his voice over the howl. "See? Come on!"

Judy pulled it over her ears and scrambled after him.

He was right, too - she was immediately glad for it. The wind out here was a constant frozen blast off the wall, far worse than when it ran under normal load thanks to the storm. It cut through every gap in Judy's insufficient layers. She felt flying snow ticking off her exposed paws and ears, hard enough to sting in places.

Nick led them toward the car ahead, and motioned her forward where he would be able to cover from the rear, just like they drilled. There was some crumple damage up front where it had plowed into the drift, she could see as she got closer. She crouched by the front window and rapped on the glass.

"Sir, can you hear me?"

He was a dazed ferret, alone in the car, and cringing away from where Judy's light shone through. His airbags had fired, and he looked pretty out of it. The window buzzed open a crack.

"Sir, can you hear me? Are you hurt?"

"'mokay."

"Put your paws on the wheel for me. Can you move your head? Your legs?"

"Yeah, yeah..." The wreck seemed to have drained him of any fight. "I'm good."

"Stay where you are, all right? The ambulance is on its way." Judy leaned back and motioned to Nick to get the first aid kit, then jumped on her radio to summon ZEMS.

\---

It was still a long, long ten minutes. They huddled by the car and tried to make it look like they weren't huddling, and checked on their perp every sixty seconds, per procedure for cases like this. But he was wrapped in his borrowed blanket and not making any fuss.

Nick was shielding her from the wind while she scratched her frozen pen at the on-scene report. His tail kept getting blow or getting intentionally wrapped around her ankles.

"What?"

"It'll keep," he said, but when she kept looking up at him he winced. "I guess it's true what they say about the surprise ice."

"I won't say anything about it if you don't." Judy eased just a bit closer to him and squinted up at the wall.

It was even more impressive from this side, she decided. The red of the heaters backlit the whole thing, like it was some enormous volcano. The snow was bouncing off her nose but she could smell the rain from the other side. The lightning came hard and fast.

Nick bent to check the window again. The whole car was starting to fog over with the ferret's breath.

"Eight-two, eight-two, your ride's here." It was a new voice on the radio, with a two-tone roger beep. "Stay to the north edge of the road, please."

The rumble carrying to them now wasn't thunder - and it was coming from the wrong direction. Judy looked up in time to see a ZEMS snowcat the size of a ladder truck crest the drift on the road above them, like a boat on a slow-motion wave. Its lightbars were going full-bore, and as Judy watched a polar rabbit running one of the huge storm spotlights swung it down to pinpoint the wreck.

Once its tracks clattered onto level ground the side door disgorged a whole team of medics - more than the incident probably warranted, but ZEMS had inclement weather policies, too. Two reindeer jogged up to meet her and Nick; A marten and a buffalo with a scene bag and a backboard went for the ferret in the car.

"Confirming this," the lead medic called over the wind as he accepted Judy's report. "No major injuries, no fire?"

"That's right," Judy said. "He had his belt on, and his airbags worked. I think he's just rattled."

"We'll get him sorted out from here, then." He craned up at the tableau at the wall and shook his antlers. "Thanks. When you come by Tundra general for the arrest tomorrow, you might want to go the long way. This is going to take all day to clear."

"Right."

His companion pointed over their shoulders, to where their car was half-buried in the snow itself. "Need a tow? We can get you out of that drift in no time."

"We should be okay," Nick said. His ears dropped at another crackle of thunder. "Thanks."

\---

They took the long way home, too, so they wouldn't have to deal with the wind again. Their pursuit report was more interesting than normal, but it still took an hour past quitting time for them to finish and file everything for the night. Nick queued the cruiser they'd signed back in for a wash, and leaned back in his chair to reach across the cube.

"You okay?"

Judy closed her eyes at the careful claws along her ears. "Just tired."

"How are your ears still cold?"

"It's all right. They take a while to warm up." She turned in her chair to look up at him. "What?"

He winced. "Just replaying."

"Oh." They were the last ones out of this corner of the office for the night. Judy jumped to get the lights behind them. "Do you want to spill it here, or at home?"

"It's just the ice," Nick said. The revolving door was locked for the night, so he held the standard one on the side for her. "I'm worried I _will_ have to say something about it. Motor pool is going to wonder why we hit the drift."

"Was it driving weird? I couldn't tell."

"No, I just spelled it out." He shrugged. "Driving too fast. Ignoring the signs, like the ferret did."

And now that she was thinking about it, Judy was remembering the look on his face when he'd cut their own skid short. Some of it was coming back for him, too, probably. He always worried about how she took things, even when they were in the thick of it.

But now they were done for the night, and Judy wanted to get both of their minds off of close calls and cold wind. So instead of heading for their tram stop, Judy pulled on his paw toward the other side of the platform.

"Dinner, or something?" Nick asked.

"I have an idea."

This trolley took them east, out of Savanna Central and up toward the divide between the spires of downtown and the badlands of Sahara. There was an overlook here, at the edge of the open space. It was technically closed this time of night, but Judy figured two uniformed cops would be okay to just sit on the rocks awhile. They were still warm from the afternoon sun.

From here, they could look down over the dunes to where the storm was still spending its fury against the climate wall - and Judy could stand behind Nick and dig her claws into the fur of his neck.

"Mm." His tail thumped against her ankle and wrapped around it again. "Thanks, Carrots."

She rested her chin between his ears. "I knew you were tense."

The heaters glowed like a second sunset, whenever they showed through the clouds and dust. From here, the thunder was a muted rumble, felt more than heard.

"You know you're a better driver than I am with the big cruisers," she said. "And we came through it okay. Even the ferret. Don't beat yourself up about it."

"Yeah." Nick reached up for her as she came around and pulled her into his lap. Now his chin went over her head. "And you can yell at me when I drive, you know. If I'd taken that slower I might have saved you the bumps."

Nick's paws had found her ears. She felt his anxious little huff when he realized she was still cold, somehow.

"I'm getting you ear warmers for next time."

"Don't you dare." Judy twisted to nose up at him. "I'll be fine."

His big paws held her tight, below her vest. But eventually Nick nodded and busied himself warming her up just this once.

Judy settled back and gave him that.


	44. Coffee Break [Thematic Thursday 08.31]

One thing was for sure: Before Nick had landed a steady job he hadn't needed the wake-up boost of coffee nearly as often.

But it was right there in the bullpen every morning, and in the pot at the edge of the offices all afternoon where it got nice and strong. These days if he didn't have a cup or two he wound up with a headache. If he had too much too fast, he got a slightly different headache.

He wished he could blame Judy. But she only got about half as much caffeine as he did every morning, because she hardly needed it.

She was driving their loop through the morning shade of downtown, ears as alert as ever. He considered stealing a sip from her travel mug, but he knew he really shouldn't distract her in the middle of an intersection.

"I know how we can finish the Republic Drive request," she said.

Nick frowned. It was the lowest priority of their small pile of open cases, the ones they did when they didn't have patrol to get to or something more important to work on. An ATM theft was still serious, but nobody had been hurt. Insurance had kicked in for the bank's property and cash. "Okay."

"Bank video records have to go through their system before they'll release them, right?"

"Right."

"But if there was a traffic cam in the right spot we might have a profile we can start work on sooner." Judy checked her merge. "So we can send two requests. And we know City is likely to get back to us within the week."

"Worth a shot," Nick said. He eyed her, and her mug. "You get to fill out the form, though."

"If it saves us two days waiting, it's worth it." She twisted her ears toward him. "Don't you dare."

Nick sat back against his seat, hard. "I'm out."

"You're an _addict_ ," she said. "That's, what, your third cup of the day?"

"I think I'm insulted." He sniffed and looked out the window. "Second. I had to leave my desk mug at the desk, where it belongs."

"That might be for the best." Judy's concern was mostly in jest, and didn't last long before she relented. "We could stop somewhere if you want. Find a drive-through so we stay on schedule."

"I think we can do a bit better than that," Nick said. "Not in this part of town, though."

"Don't want to spend six bucks for a top-up?"

"Or to get judged while I do it, no." It was all pocket cafes, high-end clothing stores and stately lofts above them - not that Nick didn't enjoy wandering these streets with Judy as much as any other in the city. They just had to make a point of preparing their spending money for it.

It would be waiting, in any case. The radio crackled.

"Car 24, Dispatch."

 _"Aah-"_ Nick held up a claw to stop Judy reaching for the radio. "You drive." He took the pawset. "24 here."

"Requesting 10-59 to 1800 block of Barnes Avenue. Inspectors need escort for warrant service."

They were closest; just a couple blocks away. Judy sent them back into their original lane so they wouldn't miss their first turn.

"Got it, Dispatch. Escort, 1800 Barnes."

"Huh," she said, when he'd replaced the radio. "We don't get many of those in this neighborhood."

They would have gotten the genereal advisory already, if it was something rough. But Nick couldn't think of many other reasons for police backup, so it was best to be ready for anything. He buried his thoughts of coffee as Judy took them in.

But it was just another sunny morning street, with average traffic and pedestrians of all shapes and sizes on the walks. An elephant and a couple of squirrels crossed at the intersection where they waited, and they didn't look like they were gawking at any ZPD lights.

"This is 1800," Judy said. She had both paws on the wheel.

"Get us a parking spot," Nick said. "That's the left side?"

"Right."

"Right side, got it."

"No, as in left is correct." Judy huffed at him and cranked them around, as tight as they could turn. Nick grinned and popped his seatbelt.

Their requesting detectives were in plainclothes, as it turned out, and they must have been driving an unmarked car, because Nick didn't see either mammal until the antelope waved them down with her badge and ID half a block later. They looked like any other business team, out on a coffeeshop patio for breakfast.

"Hey, Wilde! Hopps. Over here."

"Malken?" Judy asked.

"Yeah, from Financial. Sorry to pull you guys off patrol."

"Oh, Reeves!" Nick finally got it. "Almost didn't recognize you out from behind your desk." The only other time he ever saw the Organized Crimes investigator was in the halls, or occasionally in evidence.

The big brown bear rumbled a laugh. "Don't remind me," he said. "This is the first time I've gotten out in months."

"What's going on?"

"Just warrant service," Malken said. She had a steaming mug of something on the table. "We're about to pull in a possible ringleader, and regulations say that since it was city money involved we need uniforms with us, just in case."

White collar crime made a bit more sense. But most of the time those summonses happened through the coporate network, not in the open. This had to be a special case.

It was just as new to Judy, but Nick could see her taking it in stride with the same powerful curiosity she had for every aspect of her job that didn't come up often. She stood on the lower rail of cafe's wrought fencing so she was a bit taller.

"Can you share details?"

"Our suspect is a very routine goat named Hadge," Reeves said. "She's a vice-chair on an urban enrichment committee that works with grants for charity groups - food stamps, school supplies, that sort of thing."

"We've got her friend already, on wire fraud and receiving stolen funds charges. Almost two years of activity." Malken sipped her drink. "She doesn't know that yet, though. They got a little too smart for their own good and started rotating the accounts they landed money in every quarter. No legitimate charity would do that. There's too much paperwork."

It reminded Nick of the convoluted schemes he used to watch the families set up to launder their funds. But this seemed worse, somehow. Was it taxpayer money? At least the Mr. Bigs of the city made their money from shady real estate deals, or art. Even that was more honest.

"You ready to move now?" Judy asked.

"Reeves lifted a big paw to point across the street behind them. "That's her favorite cafe, there. She drives a suspiciously new convertible out this way to get something sugary every morning before work. She'll be hard to miss going in, and we'll get set up to say hello on the way out."

"Want something to drink while you wait?" Malken tipped the mug in her hooves. "The field ops office is picking up the tab."

Nick caught Judy's attention as her ears twisted to him, but he was too distracted to take her up on the offer just now. She shrugged and turned back to grill Malken on her work.

He'd used the food pantries, once upon a time, even if it hadn't been for long. Those places had seemed strung out and scraping along, even in the best of times. And someone was making that even harder?

"Oops, here we go."

They turned at Reeves' warning, slowly so they wouldn't draw attention.

Nick shouldn't have worried. The Stampede LS was probably designed specifically to draw attention, even from the likes of cops like him who didn't know their cars. This one was mid-scale, in blue clear coat with all the trimmings. The top was down.

Hadge - and it had to be Hadge; she was the only goat out here - didn't look like an embezzler. She looked like a stockbroker. She had a stylish sweater and sunglasses perched on her forehead, and as soon as she got out of the car she had her grey-furred snout down, buried in her phone. She skipped the meter.

 _"Hey,"_ Judy protested.

Malken scowled, too, and Reeves laughed with just a hint of bitterness. "That's the least of her worries, Hopps."

Nick watched her weave around other pedestrians on the tree-lined sidewalk. They let her push through the mid-scale door at the front of the shop before they got up.

"We'll do the talking," Malken said, when they'd crossed the street to stand outside, off to one side so they wouldn't be in the way. "I'm hoping she won't even know what's up before we get her cooperating."

"Got it." Nick reseated his glasses. That suited him just fine.

He could see through the tinted storefront window. Any place called _Second Crack_ was probably trying too hard, and it sure looked that way. Hadge was leaning on the middle bar amid the curated kitsch, ignoring small talk from someone behind the counter while she waited. She paid in cash, he noticed.

They stood back as she approached the door and let the financial team do its work.

"Miss Hadge?"

She looked up from her phone, and even when she saw the badges she didn't seem to get it.

"What?"

"I'm Laurel Malken, ZPD. This is Inspector Reeves. We need to ask you some questions about the Sunrise Group."

"Why?" She locked her phone and put it away. "Is something wrong?"

"Maybe you can tell us," Reeves said. "None of the charities you work with report actually receiving the money your group manages for them."

Now Hadge definitely did get it. Her snout twisted.

"Really? It must be late." She covered the nerves with a sip of her enormous drink. Nick smelled rich chocolate and sugar. There was no buying taste, apparently.

"Listen, Ma'am-" Malken glanced at her partner. Nick wondered if Hadge realized she would know exactly what delays in the payment system looked like. "We've got the paperwork right here, and we'd like to keep from making a fuss, just like you."

"I'm the chairmammal of the Sunrise board," Hadge said, as if that meant something. "Are you arresting me?"

"We don't want to," Reeves said. "But if you don't ride with us, these officers will be taking you straight downtown."

Nick couldn't resist raising his eyebrows behind his glasses, and enjoying Hadge's discomfort a little more than he should have. Even Judy was cranky now, thanks to her disregard for parking law. Her foot was thrumming, so subtly Nick doubted the others could even pick it up.

But Hadge had the look of someone who still didn't realize just how much trouble she was in. Or, Nick thought, if she was as guilty as the evidence suggested, maybe she just didn't have any qualms about stealing tax grants from those who couldn't even pay taxes.

She went with Reeves, who led her back across the street to the waiting unmarked car. Malken brew a breath before she followed.

"Nice and easy. Three months of building a case, and it wraps up that neat and tidy. Thanks for the help."

"We'll get parking enforcement down here for the car," Judy promised.

Now Malken did crack a smile. "Sounds good. Take care, you two."

They took their time going back to their own parking spot. Judy got them underway and back on pattern.

"You meet so many _pleasant_ mammals in this job," Nick said.

She bent her ears and gave him an understanding smile. "She made some new friends, at least."

"True." The more he speculated on how Hadge might be affording the lease on such a nice car, the worse he was going to feel on top of the caffeine headache, so he stopped.

He was glad that particular case wasn't his problem, but he was also glad he was now in a position to do something about it. He _did_ pay taxes now, and as far as he was concerned that was some of the most important money in the city's budget.

"We didn't stop anywhere," Judy said.

"Huh?"

"For coffee."

"Not worried about it anymore, Carrots." It was the truth. "Whatever Hadge was drinking was a bit of a turn-off."

"Okay. If you change your mind-" She smiled at him again and took them around the next corner. "You can finish mine."


	45. CONTINUED ALERT: X18/2B  S10E24  2500MeV [Thematic Thursday 11.09]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Tank four check is still orange here, Daramir," she said into the radio. "Try it again."
> 
> "It is just the display," Karinsky cut in. "Again. The batteries are low."
> 
> "Then it needs a good smacking," Daramir rumbled. A muffled _clonk_ echoed up through habitat's open hatches. "Try now."
> 
> Sure enough, tank four went green. Sharla grinned. The finest life support systems science had ever developed, and sometimes they responded to the oldest repair in the book. It felt like something they might have tried during the last lunar missions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Thematic Thursday on /trash/. This week the prompt was the Zootopian Air and Space Administration.
> 
> So, of course, I had to write about Sharla's adventures.

It was funny - after a lifetime of building a career in spaceflight so she could get closer to the stars, Sharla Romedale found she was often far more fascinated with watching the Earth turn underneath her. Apparently it was a common epiphany among space station crewmembers.

Not that she had time to take in the mountains and twinkling rivers below her right now, or even time to do her scheduled work of preparing the station to boost its orbit. Right now she had a checklist to finish.

Air scrubbers, water recycling, the main power bus - Sharla had to check each one of them against the countdown timers to make sure they were charged and ready for an unscheduled three-day wait.

It was irony that, like most things up here, verged on the cosmic. She was ZASA's premier astrodynamicist. The best. She could and often did plot the station's orbit down to the second, but all the credentials in the world couldn't stop the sun from throwing a giant magnetic wrench in things. Now she didn't know how long it would last. She missed the certainty of numbers and timetables.

And the big flare was going to delay the latest resupply launch, too, because the flight wonks down there were still recycling boosters with the old unshielded avionics. They wouldn't be getting their stores refreshed for another week.

And that meant they had to drop everything - including preparations for the orbit boost burn - to run the holdover procedures and make sure they had the supplies to wait out the storm.

So now she was upside down in the cupola where she could run the main computer, cross-checking against the physical list floating in front of her and the one velcroed to her thigh.

"Tank four check is still orange here, Daramir," she said into the radio. "Try it again."

"It is just the display," Karinsky cut in. "Again. The batteries are low."

"Then it needs a good smacking," Daramir rumbled. A muffled _clonk_ echoed up through the habitat's open hatches. "Try now."

Sure enough, tank four went green. Sharla grinned. The finest life support systems science had ever developed, and sometimes they responded to the oldest repair in the book. It felt like something they might have tried during the last lunar missions.

She checked the lists one last time before she pushed to one side of the dome and fastened the binder to its clips by the display. "That's everything, Commander."

"And ahead of schedule." That was Marschann, and unlike with Daramir's deep voice, Sharla couldn't tell roughly where he was on the station. The tube runs went just about everywhere, or he could be floating free in the cargo bays or the science module. "Nicely done. Everyone rally to the main module if you can, please. You can call it, Romedale."

"Yes, Sir." Sharla toggled her headset over to the ground band. "Control, Station here. Contingency checklist is complete."

_"Good copy, Station. Be advised, you have twenty-three minutes to proton flux. RSD team, please start your shelter procedures. We'll pick up normal operations in four hours, once the worst of the noise is past."_

"Received, control," Marschann called.

On the bright side, Sharla thought as the station crossed the dawn line and pure light filled the cupola, it was going to be fascinating. She never thought she'd be lucky enough to witness a solar flare from orbit, The aurora it was about to paint over the atmosphere would be unprecedented.

But she had to pull her eyes away from the curvature skating past out the window again, to pull out another checklist.

The one exception to the lockdown was Faure's cameras, whose mission was designed to switch over and capture any flare they were in position to. But Faure wouldn't be present to watch this one, so it fell to Sharla.

"Is it ready?"

Sharla turned her head at the tiny voice from the bulkhead. Faure was ahead of schedule, too, back early from her duties in the science bay to peer out of the mouse-scale runner tube.

"And waiting." Sharla pointed as Faure floated free of the tube and up into the sunlight so she could see out of the cupola. The cameras had rotated into position on their gimbal arm; when flare activity started registering the lens covers would open and the computer would keep them pointed straight at the sun. "Don't worry about it."

"I know I shouldn't. But the science team never designed these cameras for long-term sun-watching. On paper, it'll work, but there's always the chance they'll get damaged."

I can watch the sensors and the drives," Sharla reassured her. "We drilled for this, too."

"I know." Faure had a guilty smile. She reached up to push off the portal frame and toward the ground repeaters. Her tail flicked behind her and added a little extra to her spin. "And I trust you can run it for me. I just don't like being locked away for it."

"That's for our safety," Marschann said.

They turned themselves around. The commander wasn't in the tubes; instead he wore one of the mobility backpacks, with compressed air jets that could propel a mouse around in the open spaces designed for much larger mammals.

"And that also means restraint or rig, Faure." He looked long-suffering as he drifted closer. "Please. We're on an emergency timetable here, we can't go chasing anyone around because they came loose."

"Yes, Sir." She reached behind her for the lower-tech cable spool on her belt and clipped it onto a monitor arm.

The accelerometers on Marschann's rig got more impressive each time the scientists sent up new ones. They let him glide up almost to a relative stop at eye level with them with a series of nearly inaudible hisses from his jets. "Is the science bay ready?"

"Yes."

"Cargo bay, too." Raspoli poked his black-furred head out of the aft runner. "But I checked the pantry, Boss, and I couldn't help but notice we're low on protein."

"Take it up with the budget mammals. They're the ones that wanted one more use out of the old first stages, and those don't play well with radiation." Marschann spun in place. Sharla heard him over the radio this time. "Daramir, status?"

"The batteries are ready." Daramir didn't need her radio; the enormous white bear appeared in the nexus past Faure's feet - and Sharla's head - and put an effortless paw out to stop her glide and move out of the way.

"Where's Karinsky?"

"Securing solar panels. They are turned to shelter from the flare."

"Shouldn't we be doing that, too?" Faure asked. She was watching the slow but perceptible crawl of the shadows on the other side of the cupola bulkhead.

"Once the check's done," Marschann said. He started another drift, probably so he could see Karinsky down the central spine of the station. Their commander liked putting eyes on everyone whenever situations got stressful, just in case.

Raspoli whistled. "Look at that sucker."

Sharla reoriented herself carefully, head toward the cupola windows. Her ferret crewmate was wrapped around the lower edge of a larger-scale keyboard to give himself leverage while he stretched out to type.

He'd pulled the latest feed from control, which showed a looping multi-wavelength image of the sun from one of the orbiting observatories. There was a jagged flicker of flare going on its limb, so bright it was overloading the instruments that recorded it. The charged protons were already fizzing the electric-blue images with grain; they would get a whole lot worse in the next few minutes as the main wave arrived in the magnetosphere.

"X-18," Faure read. "Higher than we expected the next one would be."

"It's a lot of juice." Raspoli changed the feed from blue to green. "It looks even better from SDM."

_"Better."_

"It's less ominous than _worse_ , but I could call it that if you want." Raspoli grinned as Faure drifted down to join him. Sharla made room for the others as they came closer. "It's not like we'll feel it."

"We are safe inside," Daramir agreed, over their shoulders now. She winked at Faure and gestured out the bright cupola with a huge paw. "It is like going to the dentist, no more."

"Easy for _you_ ," Faure said, and held her paws wide to indicate how much larger the bear was. "I'd honestly rather be at the dentist anyway. Instead I'll be stuck in the emergency module with Raspoli for three hours."

"Just for that, I _will_ talk your ear off," Raspoli said. He shook his head. "Really? A heliophysicist, scared of the sun?"

"I'm not scared," Faure said. "I'm having a moment of _perspective_ , is all, because unlike you with your cell cultures I can actually appreciate the energies involved." She had her tiny paws on the screen, until that slight pressure set her drifting again. Her voice was almost reverent. "That could be millions of times the power we consumed on Earth last year, in just a few minutes."

"And we'll ride it out just fine." Marschann zipped back toward them, expertly skirting Daramir's bulk. "We're at more risk of falling out of orbit."

"Which is still zero," Raspoli said. He looked at Sharla. "Right? How many orbits can we let that boost burn slide?"

"Two weeks, four days, six hours is..." Sharla checked her watch and ran the rough mental division. "283. And change."

"See? No problem."

Marschann was all amused patience. "Karinsky says he's going to run his atmosphere tests at the same time, so you'll have some company, Romedale." He tapped at the screens built into his backpack. "You'll shift change with Daramir at 0800."

Sharla clicked the bezel on her watch around to mark the time. "Very good, Sir."

He jetted up so he was eye level with the polar bear. The sun cast his sharp-edged shadow over her utilities and white coat. "Get some rest before then, if you can. You're on free time."

Daramir seemed to already be thinking the same way. Her yawn was cavernous enough to swallow Marschann and his pack with room to spare. "Yes, Commander."

Raspoli had scrambled back into the tube. Faure lingered, where she was still watching the playback from the solar satellites.

"Don't keep her too long," Marschann told Sharla. He drifted down past them. "We're sealing the hatches in five."

"I'll be there," Faure said.

Raspoli was already on the link with control, going through the checklist for closing up the small-scale module.

"It'll run fine," Sharla reassured her friend. "And three hours will go by before you know it."

"I wish we had more time, honestly." Faure wrang her tiny paws. "It's all happening so fast, I keep thinking we'll miss important data."

"You can check it yourself as it comes in. Wireless might go a bit wonky with the radio flux, but your hardlines will work just fine."

"Yeah, you're right." She tugged on her harness line so it would start retracting and pull her back to the run tube. "Thanks for doing this for me, Sharla."

"It's once in a lifetime, right?" Sharla waved a hoof goodbye. "You know I'm happy to help."

"I will be in C module," Daramir said. "Preparing the cameras." She tapped a single claw on the cupola pane to push herself off down the module, and to get Sharla's attention. "Remember, shut these hatches."

"I will," Sharla said.

"Control, life support green, power bus green." Marschann's signal was already starting to fizz with interference. "Midlayers are pressurized and nominal."

The small-scale shelter module was like an overengineered thermos, with a layer of water sandwiched between its bulkheads. It would be on its batteries and its own air now, to protect the smaller mammals from the burst of hard radiation that was about to shower the station.

_"Copy. Ten minutes to arrival, Station. Expect full signal loss on S-band and partial on Ka-band during bombardment. See you on the other side."_

Out the window, silent servos started pulling the cupola shutters closed. Sharla pushed against the monitor arms to get a better angle, and ignored the spectacular feed from the solar satellites to watch Earth for as long as she could. There were no auroras yet.

But she knew they would last for a few orbits after they could reopen the windows, at least. And she would be done with her camera work then. She ought to be able to steal a moment to watch.


	46. No Such Thing as too big [Thematic Thursday 12.21]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A belated but still timely holidays TT for /trash/.

It happened every year. Nasty weather complicated their jobs - and threw wrenches in the most carefully laid Christmas eve plans.

When natural winter storms rolled in over Zootopia's engineered climate, they tended to get even more serious. Now Rainforest was underwater, and even the upper reaches of Savanna were getting snow.

And desert mammals on vacation weren't used to driving in slick conditions. Nick could sympathize with that.

Driving on an expired license at the same time? Not so much.

"What's going to happen to them?"

"If I had to guess? Emergency surgery." Nick held the cruiser's back door open. "Watch your step, Sir."

And on Christmas eve, too. Their camel driver sure looked contrite now. Hindsight did that.

Nick could have just held his tongue. But he was... _disappointed_. Again. And not just because a mammal had been reckless and put others in danger. He tried to put the frustration of yet another delay out of his mind, and went to find his partner.

Judy was still picking her way around the car in the road. The ambulances that were pulling away had their chains on, just in case.

"The car is his," she said when he came up to survey the damage. "And the registration is good."

"So, what, oversight?" Nick snorted. His breath steamed. "His license was four months out of date."

She gave him a wary look. "He's got a drink in the cupholder, and stuff in his back seat. I bet you he's been driving since then."

The car was still ticking in the cold. Nick looked away from where the front bumper was freshly scuffed. "We can take him in whenever."

"I want to wait for the scene team," Judy said. She pointed back to the furrows the car had left in the slush. "They're going to want to measure these skid marks anyway."

Nick actually debated reaching for her. She had to be cold, the way she'd been climbing around up to her knees in the wet, sticky snow.

But she was as disappointed about this as he was. And when she got disappointed, she got focused. She wouldn't want to stop her work, no matter how nasty the weather was.

The night's surprise would keep, at least. That would have to be enough.

"Watch your step, then," he said.

Nick collected their own hazard signs and watched while she paced out the skid marks and scribbled in her little notebook.

The driver had slid straight through the red light in the slush and hit a deer and a lynx in the crosswalk, and they were all lucky the scale differences weren't any greater. As it was, the deer had broken her leg and her companion had messed up his paws, holding them up in front of her.

So of course Nick and Judy were going to divert to help. It didn't matter that they had been wrapping up their patrol for the day. it didn't matter that they weren't exactly prepared for cold weather themselves. Warming up could wait, until the job was done.

Judy deserved to warm up, and not just because her suit had to be waterlogged by now. This was reminding Nick of another time they'd stayed to work late in the cold, up onto the divide during a snowstorm like this, to check on mammals from the university's science team.

At least then they'd been able to curl up in the cruiser afterward, to snuggle away the worst of the chill. The audience would make that a bit awkward this time.

Judy returned to the car and jumped up into the passenger seat. She shook her feet out over the snow. Slush and cold water fanned from her toes.

"All set?" Nick asked her when she pulled the door shut.

"Yep." She turned to peer through the grate behind their seats, at the morose camel. "Comfy?"

\---

They got their driver through booking, and retreated to their desk to finish the paperwork. Judy twisted her ears up at Nick when he came up behind her chair and draped his scarf over her shoulders. It was larger than it needed to be - longer than she was tall, in fact - but that meant it would be extra warm.

"Thanks, Nick."

"Can I get your feet, too?"

She smirked at him. "I'll be okay."

"I told you going back to get this would be useful." Nick lingered long enough to press one of her ears between his palms. She was still freezing.

"We were almost late."

"Worth it," Nick said. "Wait here. I'll get you some coffee."

She huffed at his overprotectiveness. "Decaf."

"Decaf."

Nick made her keep the scarf when they were finally done and leaving, too. Now it was wrapped tighter so she wouldn't trip over it, and they huddled right by the heat registers on the train home. It was standing room only - everyone had somewhere to be on Christmas eve.

"We"re packed, dinner's ready..." Judy ticked items off on her fingers. The scarf muffled her voice. "Did you get tickets for tomorrow?"

"Yeah, we have the email." Nick looked at the stop map. "Let's get bread, too. Something to dip in the soup."

"Good idea." Judy held up a tiny rabbit-scale earbud for him and pulled her scarf far enough away that she would be able to talk. "Here. I'm calling home in case they want us to bring anything."

She'd called her mom, but they got Sharon instead.

"Hi, Judy!" Her voice barely stood out amid the inimitable roar that was a whole burrow of rabbits. It sounded like a festive warzone, even over Judy's tiny headset. "Mom's juggling hot pies with Aunt Sally right now, sorry. Is Nick with you?"

"Right here," Nick said. "It sounds like we're missing all the fun."

"Oh, don't worry, we'll save some for you." There was a clatter and Sharon's voice briefly faded as she moved away from the microphone. "You're done with work, I hope."

"Even earlier than last year," Judy said. She smiled up at him in her borrowed scarf. "Tonight's going to be a nice quiet dinner. We'll be on the morning train. Do you want us to bring anything?"

"There's as much food here as there is any harvest," Sharon said. "But if you bring it, we'll eat it, I'm sure." There was another muffled commotion, and raucous laughter. "Listen, I've got to go before Winter sets the soup pot on fire."

"I'll let you know when we're on our way," Judy said.

"Travel safe, guys."

They ended the call. Nick grinned at the implication.

"I didn't know you could get soup hot enough to combust."

"You'd better hope it can't," Judy said. She shivered, as the doors opened at the stop before theirs and cold air rushed in past the forest of taller mammals standing in the car. "I left the pot running all day."

"Will that hurt it?"

""Probably not. It might taste even better, since we're late."

Nick hoped so, for her sake. She deserved the best Christmas eve dinner they could make.

Even the corner store by Judy's apartment felt cold, and not just because they went through the frozen-foods section. The shelves were picked almost clean. There was no sourdough left, or any of the seed-studded whole grain loaves that Judy liked. All Nick could turn up, from the bottom shelf back in the corner-

"Sesame bagels."

Nick let the sad little bag swing from his paw. "We could skip it."

"No, we can use it for breakfasts, too." Judy pulled her ears back up. "Let's get them."

After that it was one more chilly walk down the street, past a neighborhood that had made it home before they did. Lights were on in most of the apartments now. Some of the balconies and stoops had festive lights strung around them. The storm was on its way down here, too. Nick could see his breath - but at least the giant scarf was catching most of Judy's.

They paused to stamp cold feet and shake out ears in the foyer, and climbed the stairs to Judy's apartment. Nick stood close behind her while she jingled her key in the lock. Almost time.

"I know, I know," Judy laughed, where she sensed his eagerness. She pushed the door open. "I could eat the whole-"

It smelled incredible. The crock pot had infused Judy's whole apartment with the savory scent of vegetables and spices - and warmed the tiny room up nicely all on its own. Condensation crept along the corners of the chilly window. The lights came on and bathed Nick's couch in dim, unobtrusive light. It was all quite cozy.

But Judy was, as Nick had predicted, now more preoccupied with the green package sitting on the rug in front of the couch. She turned her head, so quickly her ears waved.

_"You didn't."_

Oh, but he had. And pulling off a successful surprise always warmed him up. That tightness in his chest never got old.

And now he could set about warming her up properly, the way he'd wanted to since this afternoon. Judy didn't resist as Nick pulled her back against him and tugged at her borrowed scarf. Now it was just in the way.

"Nick-"

It was too late. He had his claws under her stab vest to get her off the ground and the door was snapping shut and her frigid ears were limp under his careful teeth.

Judy's breath stuttered. "We told each other."

"No gifts, I know." But Nick couldn't help but break that rule, because it made this - her _squirming_ in his arms - just that much better. She probably knew it, too. Her vest came away in his paws. "But this is for both of us."

"You and your loopholes."

"It's a tradition now, right?" Her feet were still so cold, when he let her down gently to put her slight weight on his toes.

Now he'd gotten her nice and curious. He could see it in her ears, and the way her nose twitched every time she passed the big box that came up to her waist.

He changed into night-in clothes and prodded Judy into showering while her building's hit-or-miss hot water was still available. While he waited, he scooped their soup into the mismatched mugs.

It had started life as an old Hopps recipe, like almost every other dish they'd learned to cook together. The potatoes were new, though, left to simmer in a slow-cooker for as long as possible until the broth started to reduce to something creamy and thick. They had bread for it too, now.

Judy came back out dressed for what had to be revenge, in nothing but her big sleep shirt and leg warmers, and tugged the biggest, thickest blanket she had from her bed. Nick indulged in watching her hips move, but he stayed quiet and hid his smile. He couldn't have planned this any more perfectly.

"I've been with you all day," she accused, when he joined her on the couch and she'd pulled his tail under the blanket with her.

Nick nearly burned his tongue on the soup as he slurped. "Bucky helped me hide it last night."

Her eyes were wide with comprehension. "So when you went back for your scarf before we left-"

"Yep."

Judy shook her head at him again, her eyes full of love and patient humor and - when she huddled close to him, and to the steam of her soup - the faintest sorrow. "I didn't get you anything."

"I told you, this is for us," Nick said. He got an exploratory paw under her blanket, and under some other things too. "Think of it as shared home improvement." It would make this moment even better.

Her spoon clinked against her mug. "Then I guess I should hurry up and open it, huh?"

"Once we eat." He held up a slice of bagel for her.

And once their soup was warming them up she slipped away, out of her blanket and out of range of Nick's paws. He made their mugs safe and leaned back to watch again, while she crouched by the box. She tugged at the ribbon and unstuck the tape that held the wrapping paper in place. Her ears stood at attention and her eyes widened.

It was like her blanket, or the scarf she'd borrowed, but better. Bigger.

_Way_ bigger. Judy pulled and pulled on the box-stitched comforter that seemed to go on forever, and Nick felt his satisfaction at caring for the love of his life start to buckle under the sheer weight of fabric. Something was wrong.

It had to be for large-scale mammals, he realized. He knew he'd specified big, but this might have been comfortable for an elephant. If they unfurled the whole thing, it would probably cover half of her apartment.

When she looked up at him, Nick wasn't sure who was more indimidated. She started to laugh.

"Oh, Nick."

"It, uh." He swallowed. "It looked a lot smaller at Itreea."

She could barely lift the whole thing. "Did they give you the wrong size?"

That would be up to her, he decided, when he saw she was going to bring it back to the couch. He got to his feet to help. "I don't think so."

It was soft against his paws, and just fluffy enough that it was already warm where it covered them. Judy clambered into its midst with the same determination she turned on the giant cruisers they drove every day, or the oversized chairs in the bullpen.

But this time, instead of being something she had to cope with, it would offer her - offer them both - a chance to indulge. Even with both of them sharing the warmth it would still be more blanket than either of them needed.

Nick watched all but her ears disappear in a pile of soft, smoke-colored quilting - and when he leaned forward to stick his snout inside, he found her sitting with her knees to her chest, beaming up at him.

"Comfy?"

She reached up to pull on him so he tipped forward into a hot, long kiss. That was a _yes_ , then. His guilt melted.

"Nick, I love it," she breathed against him. "It's like a one-blanket blanket fort."

"Oh, good." Nick licked her nose. "Do you let foxes in your fort?"

"Wait, wait." Judy's paws stopped him before he could join her. They were finally warmed up, to match the eager smile she gave him.

"No?"

"No. I mean yes. Yes, you can come in. Foxes are allowed in the blanket fort." Her ears wiggled at him and she hugged her knees closer. "But pants aren't."

"Oh, okay." Nick cocked his head, even as he reached down to pull at his clothes and fulfill her request. "Be sure you like it, then, because this means we can't return it."

"It's perfect, fox." Judy laughed. She drew him closer, into the warmth. "Come see."


	47. Hardly a Secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Judy and Nick talk Bogo into giving them parking duty.
> 
> For the official two year (!!!) anniversary.

"I skipped you two in the bullpen for a reason," Bogo said. He shook his head again. "No. I'm not putting two veterans on parking duty when forensics is waiting on their reports."

"Forensics has our reports, Sir." Judy sat on the front edge of the chair, so her legs dangled into space. She was used to the oversize furniture now - whether she was in here to get dressed down or commended, it was as much a part of Chief Bogo's office as he was. Nick had even stopped teasing her about it. "We finished those this morning before roll."

"You still have better things to be doing than scut work, Hopps." Bogo appeared so totally unimpressed with their initiative that Judy couldn't tell if it was an act. He tilted his head so he could squint at them over his glasses. "It's for breaking in the rooks, as you well know. I'll never understand why you're so fond of it."

Judy had considered her first ever meter maid role punishment for all of two days. Now it was even more special - not that she or Nick would get into the details of exactly why.

Bogo did actually know, of course. Judy was sure of it, because it was hardly a secret. He'd been one of the first to acknowledge it, and the first to cut them careful slack.

But he had a reputation to maintain, too. He was still watching them in stony silence.

"It still needs doing for the day, doesn't it?" Judy asked. "You didn't put anyone on it in the bullpen."

"Department revenues aren't going to collect themselves," Nick added. He leaned forward on the knee he had up on the edge of the chair. His tail swished. "And we're back to being good publicity again. Or at least Judy is."

Judy wanted to scowl at him, but he was right. For what it was worth, they were in the headlines for good honest policing far more often than anything bad these days. But Bogo still didn't look ready to risk those odds.

"We'll even try to pick up leads for the next case while we're out," Judy said. She pointed to the thickest file on the desk above her. "The commerce one, with the longshoremammals in Canal District."

Now their chief snorted and looked at the map on his wall. "Not likely. The union never budges until the courts get involved."

Nick was already smiling. They had anticipated this. "Is Paulie Stamper still running things down there? Big rhino?"

Bogo pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's too early for this, Wilde."

"No problem," Nick said anyway. It wasn't an act. Judy knew he actually enjoyed when he could bend his old life to help his new one - and she knew that he wouldn't have brought it up at all if there were any risk of it spiraling out of control, like it had so many fateful times before. They were smarter than that now. "He and I go way back."

"Do tell."

"Well, it's not like Paulie is up to anything illegal himself," Nick said. "He likes the job perks too much to risk any of it, and he likes to say there's no one as good at directing a load than him. I'm guessing he's right, too."

"Your vote of confidence won't plug up these undeclared imports."

"No, but if we find him, I can talk to him about passing on some info, and in ways that won't draw any attention. Mammals down there might notice commerce reps. They'd definitely notice OCD."

Bogo raised an eyebrow. "As opposed to ZPD's celebrity duo."

"We _are_ smaller than Reeves." Nick couldn't resist. "He thinks it's not a bad idea, by the way."

Bogo's surprise moderated, at the mention of their forethought. Judy kept her ears up and smiled wider for him, just in case it helped. He had to know they wouldn't rush into anything so sensitive. "And I'll keep Nick from running off and trying to solve the case himself."

Bogo finally sighed and pulled a briefing packet from the top of the huge binder. "See that you do, or it's two months of tax cases for the both of you."

Judy couldn't help but beam at her partner.

"Yes, Boss," Nick said.

"You're up to, what, four hundred now?"

"That sounds right," Judy said.

"Five hundred tickets by the end of the day, then." The smile nearly - nearly - cracked through Bogo's scowl while he dared them to object.

Not likely, Judy thought. A challenge was a challenge. "We'll get it done, Sir."

"Go see Stamper first." Bogo gave them the paperwork, somehow managing to look like an indulgent parent and ominous boss at the same time. He knew, all right. "And be careful."

Judy took it and they slid off their chair to leave. Nick waited until they were out in the busy hallway to wink at her excitement.

"Told you he was going to bump the count."

"It's worth it," Judy said. She read the file over. The parking tickets could wait, for now. Bogo was trusting them with the first steps in what could be the department's next big case, and she didn't intend to let him down. "We'll just get to go to more places."

"Let's make sure that includes Sahara," Nick said. He donned his favorite glasses and held the door for her. Their little buggy was waiting. "Fin's got the stand down there today, and I want a pawpsicle."


	48. Two-Mammal Corn Harvest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just staying warm while I work on longer projects.

Nick loved every single aspect of the farm work that Judy had grown up with. He said so, every time they went back to visit her hundreds of siblings.

But there were some things that - despite his enthusiasm and his powerful curiosity - he just wasn't good at helping with.

His feet were just a bit too big to fit among the delicate furrows they tilled for spices and other small crops.

He didn't have the mechanical know-how to help Joe and his buddies with the tractors, though to be fair, torque regulation software and delicate linkage soldering went over everyone's head.

Even the kitchen, that center of the homestead that the Hopps family ran like an industrial machine, wasn't always a place for a fox. The first few days of every visit, an endless stream of kits pounced on his tail wherever he went. She sensed it was starting to make him uncomfortable.

So Judy had taken them both out from underfoot, out to the smaller fields where the family grew crops for its own use. The sun was low, the dirt was cool and lovingly tended between her toes, and they'd both found something they could do to help.

And now they had these rows of corn to themselves. Judy held up the big basket, and Nick reached for the ears at the tops of the stalks to snap them off.

"I don't think this one's ripe yet," Nick said. He sniffed at the corn in its husk. "I don't see any silk at the end."

"Then we can come back to it in a few days." Judy hefted the half-full basket and braced it on her hip. "If someone else doesn't get to it before then."

Nick smiled down at her haul. "Yeah, I imagine this trip will feed about ten of you, once."

"There are lots of able paws to keep it up." She set the load down to demonstrate. "Except we have to pull on the stalks to get to them, like this."

"Doesn't that hurt it?"

"Not really." Judy tossed the ear into the basket. "But you are faster at it. So thank you."

"Oh, good." Nick reached up and held the next stalk down so she could grab the corn. "Do you need any lightbulbs changed while I'm here?"

"You joke, but we actually might." 

By the time they finished the row, Judy was tugging the full basket behind her. Nick paused to brush his paws and gave her his concerned attention.

"Can I help?"

"Thanks." She pulled it around one last time. "Normally there are teams."

"You could have fooled me." Nick bent down and, instead of grabbing the basket, scooped her up in his arms. 

Judy squeaked.

"Thanks for teaching me how to pick corn," he murmured against her ears.

When she looked up at him he kissed her nose. She reached for his muzzle. "I'm glad we could find something."

Nick leaned them back against the stalks - and nearly fell over when they bent under their combined weight. They wound up sitting inside the first row, in the shade that dappled down from the leaves above them. Once Nick caught his balance, he seemed to decide the new arrangement worked just fine. He leaned back and pulled her close again.

"Have I ever told you how much I love your farm jeans?"

Judy smiled at his adventurous paws. "Careful. I think I leaned on some hydraulics in the garage."

"Mm. They pay good money for that look back in the city." He had his long nose under her cheek. She heard tight denim crackling under his claws.

Oh, he was definitely enjoying their time alone. Judy squirmed, as the temptation to leave the basket for later grew. But they were supposed to bring it back for dinner.

"Tonight," she said, and kissed his forehead. "When we're done with food." Again. "We'll bring some iced tea back out here and go for a walk."

Nick was playing it up, jealous and insistent and every inch the hungry fox. "Just the two of us."

"Just the two of us."


	49. Guilty Pleasures [Thematic Thursday 04.26]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Thematic Thursday prompt on /trash/.

Weeknights were usually nothing special. Judy had planned to make it special anyway. In an ideal world, she would have had time to cook dinner, and maybe watch another episode of Nature's Fury before bed.

Vice operated on a weird schedule, though. Apparently the best time to nail drug dealers was the dead of night - and because she and Nick had drawn detail with them, they were still at work at almost one in the morning, explaining the finer points of illegal catnip operations to a nervous impala in thick glasses.

"I know you're hoping there isn't a next time yourself," Nick said. "But if this ever happens again, there are a couple things you can keep an ear out for. Your power bill, for one."

"My power bill?" He adjusted his glasses. "I pay that on time, too."

"Oh, we don't mean to suggest otherwise." Reeves, their big bear friend from Organized Crimes, chuckled. He sorted through the paperwork with the tips of his claws. "It's because the sun lamps that grow this stuff draw an awful lot of juice. Did you not notice?"

"It didn't raise any flags," the other mammal admitted. "These tenants never missed their payments. I suppose it did look like a lot of money, but I assumed maybe they were running fancy computers. My sons do that..."

"If you're ever suspicious," Judy said, "You can always ask ZPD for a driveby. Growing catnip in apartments is catching on. Our Vice guys know what to look for."

"Maybe I will. Thanks." The impala hopped off his chair and followed them out of the conference room and into the hall. He hadn't been in questioning for evidence, but he seemed to relax once he was back in the more open space anyway. His ears weren't as rigid, and he even gave a relieved laugh. "I'll be honest, at first i thought you guys had come for me for some reason."

"Your recreational card is one hundred percent legal," Nick assured him. "What you do on your own time is your own business. It's the illegal grows we have to look out for."

"Right." His head bobbed. "Well - thanks." He stuck out an awkward hoof for shaking. "I'm going to be more careful about who I rent to next time."

They watched him cross the lobby and push through the one door that was still unlocked this time of night. Reeves shook his head.

"Poor guy's jumpy."

Nick gave Judy an amused look. "Well, Francine did kick the door in."

_"Seriously?"_ Reeves goggled. "The one time I don't come along to watch..."

"Here." Nick skipped forward to help Judy with the heavy report binders. She relinquished half. They would need to be filed at some point, but right now Judy was happy to just get them back to their desk. It could wait until morning.

"Sorry this took so long," Reeves said. He dug in the pocket of his slacks. "You two want to grab breakfast-for-dinner with the rest of Finance? Or at least me and Malken." He flashed the blue rectangle of the special investigations card. "It's on the house."

It would be Pete's, then, and that was because the diner almost never closed. If they took him up on it, Judy knew they wouldn't have time to do anyhing themselves tonight - not that she would have tried anyway, with how tired she was. She could test out her recipe some other time.

"Do you guys ever have to pay for your own food?" Nick asked. He nodded yes along with her.

"Perks of driving a desk," Reeves said. "Less SWAT action, but more free coffee." He led the way toward the front doors. It would be a short walk, and the nights downtown were almost always mild.

\---

Judy didn't even have to look at the menu. Sheri would know she wanted the harvest skillet, with mushrooms and extra spinach. Malken the antelope was already here, with a steaming diner mug of coffee in front of her, and Reeves got the pancakes. But Nick spent a couple extra beats looking at the menu. She caught his eye.

"Just do it," she told him. She could see his tail trying to wag on the booth seat next to her.

"Are you sure you don't care?"

She rolled her eyes at Sheri. She had never cared. He was a sweetheart for not wanting to subject her to bad breath, but he had to be hungry, too. "Bring him the toast and eggs. Extra runny ones, the way he likes them."

"They're already frying up," Sheri said. "More coffee coming, too. Are you sure you want more caf, Gordie?"

"Ah, I'm getting up in three hours anyway." Reeves raised his empty mug in thanks.

Malken was grinning at Nick's reaction. "Your partner sure is nice, Wilde."

Judy felt his paw feeling out hers on the bench seat between them, under the table. "Probably would have been a different story if we had to go get back in a cruiser," he said.

_Or if she were kissing him,_ she thought. "I'll never tell you what you can or can't eat," Judy promised. Their friends knew, about them, and so she was tempted to do more than just the nudge she gave him. She planned on kissing him a lot tonight anyway, eggs or no eggs. "You need the protein."

And what protein it was. When Sheri brought out their orders and topped up their coffees just minutes later, even Judy was a little bit fascinated with Nick's food.

The scent was like nothing else, sharp sort of like cheese or garlic, but with some kind of richness underneath that was almost too much. It still wasn't exactly comfortable in Judy's nose, but it was familiar enough now that it didn't unsettle her stomach like it used to.

And it put this simple, magnetic bliss on Nick's muzzle. Pete's special was to break the fried yolks over the stack of toast just before it all got plated. Her ears caught the crunch as he bit into the first slice.

"You want a booth to yourself, Wilde?" Reeves asked. "You and dinner?"

Judy laughed along with them, and settled just a bit closer to her partner.

\---

The train was custom-made to put her to sleep, Judy was sure of it. The night schedule lights dimmed a bit to give nocturnal mammals and their sensitive night vision a break, and the thump of the rails and the soft chime of the intercom at each stop was a background noise as familiar now as any crickets or wind had ever been back home.

Luckily Nick was sitting next to her, close enough to keep her mostly upright against his shoulder. He had his arm around her, and they had this section of the car to themselves. She could lean against his uniform and smell detergent and his faint scent underneath it, and doze.

"That was really nice of them."

"Good way to cap off a case," Nick said. "They were pulling long hours, just like we did."

"I was going to cook, but I think this was better." She got more comfortable. "It would have been pasta again, probably."

"Mm." His nose brushed her tired ears briefly. "Nothing wrong with pasta."

"But you wouldn't get your eggs."

He smiled down at her. "I'd survive."

Maybe she should have gone for the caffeinated coffee, too. She wasn't going to last until they got home. "Would you teach me? I could make eggs."

Nick's ears came around. "You want to cook eggs?"

"For you, I'd learn to bake _fish._ " She nodded against him. She walked past the protein coolers at the store every week. There was nothing illegal about a bunny buying eggs, or indeed even fish. Let the grocery staff judge her if they wanted. They didn't have to know it was because she was making something special for her fox.

The lone badger on the other end of the car rustled his newspaper. He might have even come up for another look, but for once Nick was as far past caring as Judy was. She knew he didn't get to do this as often as he liked. His claws ticked against her stab vest and his tail wrapped around her waist and into her lap.

"You're too good to me," he rumbled against her ears.

"Think of it more like me paying you back," Judy murmured. She was in a fox coccoon now, and she couldn't keep her eyes open. "Because you're probably going to have to carry me to bed."

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://falke-scribblings.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [chronology](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yPmpmdo39SmiRNC4BJVv2PAWi7fxBoP5FWba9n8s3qg/edit?pref=2&pli=1)


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